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Author: Gabriel Oyovota
Posted to the web: 8/18/2005 10:10:24 AM

The above captioned headline was the same used by a Newsmagazine — The Newswatch — in its edition of May30, 1988. Several years after that sad publication, the ugly situation remains unchanged, as the ailing organization has continued to decline in its service delivery. Nigeria’s NEPA is like the capital punishment called “death”. Just like death, whenever  it strikes, NEPA does not accept any form of sacrifice; be it native kolanut or local dry gin. No matter how poor, influential or wealthy one may be, death and NEPA do not respect anybody’s social status. Thus, the only way high-brow Nigerians have been able to defeat the Authority is only through the purchase of heavy generating plants, thereby damning the organization’s inaction. Aside from the Ajaokuta Steel Rolling Mill, methink that NEPA is unarguably Nigeria’s number one money-guzzling project since independence. Despite the huge sums of money expended on the ailing organization by successive governments, however, it has remained a leper. I remember vividly that, one of the conundrums that President Olusegun Obasanjo, promised to resolve soon after taking over power in May 1999, was NEPA, and in fact gave the AIDS-infested organization ultimatum to improve or else, heavens would fall. There were also rumours that the late Chief Bola Ige, volunteered, as the case may be then, to serve under the regime of Obasanjo, and indeed personally chose the Power and Steel Ministry, in order to also resolve the nightmare which NEPA has over the years unleashed on Nigerians. Under normal circumstances, and with the best of statistics, no Nigerian can boast of how much money has been wasted on NEPA in the last 20 years or so, particularly under the short but purposeful regime of Abdulsalami Abubakar and now the present Obasanjo dispensation. In my congratulatory message to Dr. Joseph Makoju when he was first appointed the Chief Executive Officer of NEPA, I had warned that as a technocrat and one who has occupied a pre-eminent position in the private sector, NEPA’s dirty terrain should not be the next port of call for some sordid reasons. Aside from Nigerians and the media that have been crying over NEPA’s unacceptable services, the organized private sector (OPS) especially NACCIMA and MAN have all lamented  the tragic consequences of NEPA’s non-performance on the nation’s industrial growth and development. For the purpose of this article, I will limit my experience to the Festac District of NEPA. It would, undoubtedly be an understatement for one to insinuate that, of all NEPA Districts  in the Lagos metropolis, that of Festac is the worst in terms of erratic and unstable power supply.  I  have been a consumer of the electricity being supplied by the District for the past 17 years and out of these long years, I have not enjoyed uninterrupted electricity supply for more than one year, in the aggregate. From dilapidated and rickety transformers to worn-out cables, high and low voltage, frivolous and ridiculous monthly bills, etc., the story of Festac NEPA district is indeed that of tragedy. Nation’s industrial growth and development.For the purpose of this paper, I will limit my experience to the Festac District of NEPA. It would, undoubtedly be an understatement for one to insinuate that, of all the National Electric Power Authority (NEPA) Districts abound in the Lagos metropolis, that of Festac is the worst in terms of erratic and unstable power supply. I have been a consumer of the electricity being supplied by the District for the past 17 years and out of these long years, I have not enjoyed uninterrupted electricity supply for more than one year, in the aggregate. From dilapidated and rickety transformers to worn-out cables, high and low voltage, frivolous and ridiculous monthly bills, etc., the story of festac NEPA district is indeed that of tragedy. During the 2004 African Nations Cup hosted by Tunisia, one of Nigeria’s all-important matches was mid-way when the district authority struck. The excuses, as usual, were that of decayed transformers due to old age, while the entire district was left in the dark for over one week. I cannot remember since the beginning of the year 2005, when one had listened to the NTA network news at 9.00 pm or.)hat of Channels TV at 10 pm. The negative implication of N EPA’s inefficiency at the festac district is obvious on the environment as night marauders often capitalise on the all- night darkness to carry our their nefarious activities; but for God’s protection and Divitie Mercies, the stories would have been different on nightly basis. Aside from this, perhaps the most debilitating effects of NEPA’s epileptic supply are the high rate of fire incidents, which became more regular between 2001 and 2003. Without early privatisation, power generation will continue to drop by as much as 1,400 megawatt as recently reported, just as NEPA installations, including the Egbin Terminal, will continue to be shut down while the industrial sector will continue to suffer untold hardship. With high cost of production due to heavy expenditure on industrial generating plants to keep work in progress, the domino effects would naturally be on the masses who will automatically bear the brunt of high cost of production. A recent report by the Bureau of Public Enterprises (BPE) showed that the nation and indeed the industrial sector is losing over US$1 billion annually due to NEPA’s epi8leptic supply. This is a bad news for a growing economy like ours. One should, therefore, commend the government on the privatisation process going on in the sickening energy sector. On a serious note, however, even after privatisation and the changes in name, I doubt if all these reforms would, in any way, affect the performance and service deliveries in view of the chronic nature of the illness that has• paralysed NEPA, long time ago. Nonetheless, since God helps thou. who help themselves, the only solution seems to be on the privatisation exercise, albeit, with all the political will, it deserves.