TheMinister of Mines and Power, Prof. Barth Nnaji, recently lamented the lack of money and infrastructure for power in the country. His lamentation forces one to ask: So, why are the people in Abuja trying to control electricity generation if they have no money to produce power' Why is the Federal Government not inviting private companies to...generate and distribute power' We sold NITEL and took our hands off telecommunications and the industry boomed, so what is so hard about electricity' Why cant the legislators do something for once and deregulate power' Why are we beholding to the special interest, the unions and groups who import and sell generators' Power generation is so important that the country cannot grow without it. So, why are we playing with something so important to our development and national interest'The usual attitude on this issue has always been one of desperation and hand wringing by policy makers when there are models that are working elsewhere in the world. Now we are told that we need $100bn and so here we are again with this attitude as usual. The Federal Government has no such money, we are told, and so the rest of us should just accept the status quo, for we have the blind that may not be able to climb the slippery mountain. I just wish that those who have no answer to our problems would just stay away from governance when they have nothing to contribute. To get in there and then give us the same excuse that we have heard for decades is not what we expected. A combination of solar, turbine, gas etc are capable of generating the power we need but our problem is not how to produce the power we need, but how to navigate the oppressive maze that has been the policy for far too long.For decades after the civil war, the Federal Government has insisted on a centrally planned system in order to control and subjugate the parts. Its attitude has been that if the federating parts are given freedom, then those who have claimed the divine right to rule the nation will lose their grip on power. So, we are subjected to a centrally controlled police system which is poorly trained, equipped and paid. Those in Abuja reserved for themselves the right to direct our lives with this oppressive system. Power is centrally generated and distributed so that lives are made unbearable, and poverty is imposed on the rest of us. What happened to the states and by extension our lives are made difficult. On paper, we are a federal system but in practice we are a unitary state. The problem is that the right usurped by the centre is actually making our lives difficult. Power is epileptic to use the worn out metaphor that Nigerians have come to live with. Nigerians have learnt to live with insecurity as the tall fences and barbed wires around homes have shown. One wonders why Abuja is so bent on controlling our lives. Why are the states not, allowed to generate and distribute power' Some State governors including Godswill Akpabio of Akwa Ibom State have requested and begged Abuja to allow them to generate and distribute power for people in their states but that has fallen on deaf ears. Akwa Ibom State has even built a power generating system only to face roadblocks from Abuja.A federation is often assumed to make life easier for the federating units for they can then collectively do what cannot be done alone. In Nigeria, such federating system has been our problem, making life extremely difficult for those who have surrendered their autonomy for a federal system. It is time we re-examined what we are doing in Nigeria and gave the states the right to opt out of systems and arrangements that are suffocating people. In Akwa Ibom, we would have achieved a whole lot if we were not handicapped by an oppressive system meant to keep us down and make corruption easy at the centre. We have had enough. This latest hand-wringing by Nnaji is a movie we have seen before and frankly, we are getting tired. Allow the states to generate and distribute power and do away with this cumbersome bureaucracy.-Dr Ezekiel Ette is a professor of Social Work in Nampa, Idaho. His latest book is Nigerians in America: Race, Ethnicity and Acculturation.
Click here to read full news..
