Forces President Buhari Must Fight To Fix Electricity – Chinedu Nebo

Prof. Chinedu Nebo, Former Minister of Power, has disclosed excuses why the government he served for two years and three months could not deliver reliable electricity power supply to Nigerians. He attributed the failure to inadequate gas supply and vandalism, even as he was not miserly in his suggestions to the new Muhammadu Buhari administration on what to do, to get it right.

He was, however, quick to point out that the huge investments in the National Integrated Power Project (NIPP) and other investments in power generation had led to a historic 6000 mega watts installed generation capacity at handover. For President Muhammadu Buhari, Nebo had a word of advice: “Wield the big stick and ensure there is gas to power if power generation is to improve.”

Right before the handover, Nebo said in an exclusive interview: “I hate excuses. But I would say that commitments were made to give us gas, but we didn’t get the gas. It is just as simple as that. It is very painful. I also blame vandalism. But much of the blame goes to the oil firms and gas producers for what I consider their hypocrisy.

He accused gas producers of being more interested in exporting the nation’s gas and diverting what remained for the domestic market to industries, instead of the power sector where it is greatly needed.

On generation, he said: “I regard the NIPP project as a huge benefit to this country. It wasn’t President Goodluck Jonathan’s administration that started it. It was started under the Olusegun Obasanjo administration, but it was left to fizzle out until President Jonathan came on board. He re-energised it and got all the three arms of government to agree to continue and complete the 10 plants.”

But my two regrets, however, are that we lost the war against vandalism and we lost the war against inadequate gas supply.


Speaking on vandalism, he noted: “I do hope that the administration would also fight vandalism and bring the vandals to their knees. If we don’t do that, we are still going to have a problem. Every two weeks, the gas pipelines are blown up. It takes two weeks to fix them only for them to be blown up again within 24 to 48 hours of fixing.”

“It cost over N120 million and thereabouts every month to fix the pipelines that are damaged. But recently, it is costing over N1billion plus to make sure that the integrity of the transportation of the gas-to- pipeline is maintained.

On how to solve the power supply problem, Nebo said: “The best way, the quickest way, the most inexpensive way of making sure that Nigerians get power, adequate power and eventually 24/7 power is embedded generation or distributed power. If you have embedded generation, 10mws or 20mws, by the time you put 20mws in 10 different places, you would have 200mws. You can do that in one year. But for a mega 200, 400, or 500mw plant, it is a different thing entirely.

“While in one year, you can have 50 of 20mws plants that translate to 1000mws, trying to do one mega plant of 1000mws takes five years. This means that we can actually give Nigerians 2000mws of power by embedded generation or distributed power every year, till the year 2020. With that, we will meet our target.”

He further called for action on the Petroleum Industry Bill (PIB) part, noting that it would liberalize the market, and make it easier for more gas to be available.