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Help Nigeria By Patrick Musa
The attention of the world is drawn to Africa in this month of July 2005. First it is the “Live 8” concert organized in Ten Western Cities around the world, then the huge march in Scotland called – MakePovertyHistory - finally the G8 meeting of the leaders of the world’s richest and most powerful nations. What these events are basically meant for is to create awareness in the developed world about the sufferings of the Sub Saharan people.
Africa is blessed with a whole lot of mineral and natural resources. We are also blessed with great human resources, rich cultures and most importantly – true love for one another in an unprecedented manner. But along with these God given blessings came the seed of discord planted in us by some countries in West as they started exploring us both for manpower (slavery) and for our resources. On another hand, nature bestowed technological advancement in the West. Also, the desire to carry out explorations around the world was another natural gift for which nature bestowed on the West. Therefore Western development and their system entered into Africa in the last century and from then it has been growing rapidly.
When the West discovered that Nigeria had Crude oil, they came in with different ideas and methods to exploit it, buy it, steal it, or simply take the product by whatever means as it was of vital importance to the world economy.
First they sold the idea of Westernization to few Nigerians and transported them to the West to receive education. They then planted in them the idea of ‘reverse capitalism’ which generated corruption. This became the beginning of a “divided” Nigeria. It also became the cause of suspicion among us. Now the State of Nigeria is gradually falling and now we need help.
Whereas the much talked about increase in financial aid is highly appreciated but what we need most is technical aid. The major area where we need assistance is the energy sector. We need a total revolution of the power supply system in Nigeria from the present level of unreliability. Without doing this there is no way Nigeria can make any meaningful progress.
It is also worthy to note that this electrical problem cannot be solved by us alone. We need genuine technical assistance. Presently in Nigeria power is generated by hydro electricity station – Kanji dam. At its present state, Kanji dam is outdated and is suffering from years of neglect and decay. It lacks maintenance. In its present structure it cannot work effectively. Moreover hydro electricity is gradually losing value in the world. What many advance countries are using is nuclear power generation and supply. That is to say if Nigeria is to make progress in the development of electricity we also need to begin to look towards nuclear power generation. It is worth to note that Nigeria is truly looking at this option but there are 2 things that are faulty in our present approach. (i). The time-table is not well laid out; (i i). The involvement of the IAEA in the system is premature.
In respect of the time-table, we need to outline a workable program that streamlines every aspect of this development to start and end in five years. To do this, we need expertise – genuine expertise which the IAEA cannot provide (let’s be sincere to ourselves). The provision of this expertise lies in the hands of qualified Nigerians who are nuclear scientist. We have many Nigerian scientists who are qualified and willing to assist us on this task. We need to start to woe them into the program. After that we must begin to look at the issue of technical support. A neutral, willing and genuine partner nation is the technical partner we need and we must diligently search for this partner. From the top of my head I do not think that the United Kingdom, United States, Japan, China, etc can genuin ely assist us here. This is because some of these countries are the leading cause of our present power problems. For many reasons these countries have assisted in manipulating our energy sector to fail. Take the United Kingdom for instance; they are the largest importer of generators to Nigeria. Therefore Nigeria is the biggest market for British generators. Conservatively put, Nigeria generator market sustains at least one million British citizens so because of a possible conflict of interest Britain cannot be a worthy technical partner. As a result, what we need is to identify several countries we know has the capability of assisting us. Then we take them piece by piece and study them carefully and finally narrow the countries to just one. Let us bear in mind that it does not matter which country this turns out to be - North Korea, China or Russia; we are only interested in using their nuclear expertise and nothing more than that. It also does not matter the location of this country or the branding of this country by the West. All we want is assistance to solve our power needs.
The Electricity Commission of Nigeria which the Federal Government is setting up need to know that to solve our energy problems we need a hard and revolutionary approach. We must blot out sentiments and favoritisms. We need absolute commitment and dedication. Finally we need a workable time-table.
Lets face it, no matter the amount of debt relief granted us; no matter the amount of financial aid, trade liberalization, etc, if we do not tackle this problem we will never make real progress towards eradicating poverty in Nigeria, rather what we will be doing is artificial progress.
At the present time, small scale industry is dead in Nigeria. Unemployment is above 50%. Our children are not encouraged to go to school because those that went cannot find adequate jobs. The real reason for this is the failure of the energy sector.
It is important to note that President Obasanjo has publicly admitted that his government failed in this sector. After spending over a billion US dollars in this sector he could not make any progress. The government needs to state sincerely that they are not determined to solving this problem. Obasanjo has continued to maintain the status quo in this moribund sector despite admitting the failure. To have spent a colossal amount of over a billion dollars and still not make progress is baffling. Who are the people that he gave this money? It is worthy to not e that the Managing Director of the NEPA is still in his position running the same company that failed us and has been in power since the last four years. Other players like Lylel Imoke who played major roles in this sector was rewarded with a Ministerial appointment as Power and Steel Minister even after he failed to make as some kind of Sole Administrator of NEPA.
Therefore we need to stop playing politics with our energy need and face the problem squarely or else the aftermath of refusing to attack this problem now will destroy our country later.
Patrick Musa
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