Minister of Power, Prof. Chinedu Nebo, on
Wednesday, described the nation’s power crisis as a nightmare.
He lamented that
120 million Nigerians (75 per cent of the population) do not have access to
electricity supply.
The minister spoke
at the Presidential Villa during a press briefing after the weekly Federal
Executive Council (FEC) meeting.
He lamented that
120 million Nigerians (75 per cent of the population) do not have access to
He, however, said
the problems associated with power are surmountable with divine intervention
together with the efforts being made by the President Goodluck Jonathan
administration.
The present
challenges, the minister explained, include unprecedented system collapse and
heavy storms that shattered transmission lines in Bayelsa and Kebbi states,
destroying four transmission towers.
Then, there are
man-made problems like vandalism, Nebo said, expressing amazement at the evil
reasoning that would push Nigerians to vandalise electricity cables and
facilities meant for their own use.
“They will all be
defeated by the grace of God,” he declared.
Another nightmare
he highlighted was inadequate funding, such that nobody thought of how to
maintain the power generation and distribution plants this year because it was
strongly believed that the plants would have been successfully sold off to
private concerns.
A new mechanism is
being put in place to solve this problem, he assured though.
Nebo disclosed
that such efforts have resulted in doubling of power generation and supply over
two years, from 2,500 megawatts to over 4,000mw now.
Even at that, Nebo
assured that current privatisation of power plants which will end by July will
raise power supply to over 5,500mw by the end of this year, and 10,000mw by the
end of 2014.
The successful
buyers of the privatised power plants are expected to have completed payment of
their outstanding balance of 75 per cent of the cost by July.
He explained that
in the long run, Zungeru and Mambilla hydro plants, conceived nearly 40 years
ago but flagged off by Jonathan recently, will add 700mw to the national grid.
Meanwhile,
Senators were told in Abuja on Wednesday that over 60 million generators were
being imported annually into Nigeria as at 2006, while about N1.6
trillion was spent to fuel the generators.
Former Director
General of the National Planning Commission (NPC), Ayodele Omotosho, disclosed
this at a two-day public hearing by Senate Joint Committee on National
Planning, Economic Affairs and Poverty Alleviation, and Finance on the review
of national planning and budgetary process.
Senators and
invited guests at the hearing listened with shock and disgust when Omotosho
revealed that this huge expenditure arose from the nation’s defective economic
planning system.
The Senate
committees were jointly chaired by Barnabas Gemade (National Planning, Economic
Affairs and Poverty Alleviation) and Ahmed Makarfi (Finance).
Omotosho told the
committee members that Nigeria cannot realise the Millennium Development Goals
(MDGs) with such waste and planning deficit.
To arrest the
trend, he advised the National Planning Commission to ensure functional capital
budgeting.
“We need to take
the annual budget back to the capital budget projections,” Omotosho told the
committee members.
He charged them to
ensure, through their oversight functions, that the NPC and other relevant
budgetary agencies engage in proper planning of the nation’s economy.
Omotosho also
advised that the Department of Planning, Research and Statistics (DPRS) should
be put under the NPC to get economic planning right.
“There should be
adequate budgeting activities,” he said.
The former DG,
however, stressed that the constituency projects in the budget should belong to
the constituencies.
To achieve this,
he said there should be early engagements between the executive and legislative
arms of government.
In his own
presentation, a Professor of Economics, John Kwanashie, said the nation would
begin to get its economic planning right when capital projects go into the
national planning arrangement.
“We need to bring
the budgetary process into the planning process,” Kwanashie said.
In his memorandum,
Henry Boyo, an industrialist, stated that for the country to correct the
deficiencies in the existing national planning and budgeting process, there
should be need to put in place, a medium term development plan.
He also suggested
a stronger, more coherent and inclusive national planning function which
requires a multi-year national plan to underpin the annual budgeting process.
Gemade (PDP, Benue
North–East) in his welcome address, stressed the essence of the public hearing
which, according to him, was to search for solution towards eliminating the
“serious discord and acrimony between the legislative and the executive arms of
government which consequently stall our progress as a nation.”
He said the nation
needs to have a national budget devoid of the current annual “incremental
envelop system, which will provide alternative planning policies and strategies
with inputs from private and voluntary sectors as well as the international
community into an effective development partnership.”
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