| I almost kill myself on this job,
says NEPA boss, Eng Joseph Makoju
By CHIDI NNADI
Monday, April 4, 2005
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Engr Joseph Makoju
Photo: Sun News Publishing |
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When the present administration came into office in 1999,
President Olusegun Obasanjo had wanted to use the energy sector
to score quick political points. Then, Nigerians were groaning
under continual epileptic power supply from the National Electric
Power Authority (NEPA). Consequently, they were happy when
the new government said power supply would stabilise in a
matter of months. But this was not to be, making the angry
President to sack the NEPA board. In its stead the government
created a technical board led by Senator Liyel Imoke, now
the Education Minister, while Engr Joseph O. Makoju was drafted
in as the managing director of the ailing authority, which
then was generating below 2,000 megawatts of power.
In this encounter with Daily Sun in his office in Abuja recently,
the NEPA managing director and chief executive reveals why
the power situation has not really changed even as he hopes
that the second half of the year would herald a new beginning,
which may culminate in achieving stability before 2007. Excerpts:
Our image
We have been getting pretty bad press and it is not unexpected
because around November/December, we would admit that the
power supply situation in the country came down below the
level it was before. And we are very sorry about this. That
was not our plan at all. There were a few things that happened
that really sort of derailed the plan we had of maintaining
the level we had in August, September, October, November,
when we were producing 3,000 megawatts and it was steady.
But from around the end of November, we started having this
problem in our system. We have been working very hard to get
back to where we were and to also make sure that we no longer
have this kind of relapse.
The problem
I think with some of the things we are doing now, I pray that
we will come to a dry season one day when NEPA doesn’t
give water as an excuse. Because like you have rightly pointed
out, the water problem is something we should expect and make
provision for. Again, the only provision you can make about
low water is to have some new generations as an addition to
thermal. You know we generate our power either using gas or
water. About 75 per cent of our generation now is actually
from gas and 25 to 30 per cent from water. So, during the
dry season the water generation goes down by about half. So,
we should use extra thermal to replace that if we want to
remain where we were.
Basically the problems we are having with power is that we
have not actually been putting in new capacities. It is a
very simple fundamental explanation for where Nigeria finds
itself in today. Nigeria is not just building additional generation.
We planned for this but something unusual happened. The water
level this year was one of the lowest in the land, something
went wrong with it.
Power demand
In the meantime, the demand is growing. As we are sitting
down here now, new houses are being connected, new factories
are being connected, people are having children, the population
is expanding, usage of electricity is increasing and yet we
are not adding anything to the supply of electricity. Since
we put Afam on over three years ago, we have not added any
new generation. I think people do not like to hear it, but
this is the truth of the matter. A nation that is not continually
adding new capacity every year, how is that nation going to
have steady electricity supply? Is this possible? You cannot
give what you don’t have. As a professional manager,
if I feel that what has been happening in the last three months
was due to incompetence or my lack of good leadership, the
honourable thing for me to do is is to resign, especially
when you have an uproar like this. If in my conscience I know
there are things I should have done and I have not done, but
God knows that I have been working for more than 40 years
now, and there is no job I have put in everything I have than
this job in NEPA. I have almost killed myself on the thing,
trying to give my best to the job. Unfortunately, the result
may not be showing it, but I know I have given everything
I can. And I am driving my staff and people in NEPA hard.
But unfortunately, with this poor performance, people don’t
appreciate that people actually work hard here, that people
are going the extra mile to give service here.
My workers and power supply
This is an organisation of some Nigerians who really…
if you compare it with other areas of human endeavour, we
work at some very unusual, abnormal level to try to maintain
service to the country. I am not trying to blow our trumpet.
You can arrange one day to go round our locations to experience
it yourself. As far as human capacity is concerned, we have
been given more than 100 per cent. But at the end of the day
our business is to supply a product, which is electricity.
And this is not just enough! And when you are supplying something
that is not enough and the people are not getting it, they
won’t be happy. They will be complaining. So, we have
to address this issue of supply as a nation. Sometimes, it
hurts me when I see us being compared with other African countries.
Some of them are not even as well endowed as we are. Take
Ghana for instance, Ghana has had steady power supply from
the time the Volta Dam was built during the Nkrumah days in
the 60s. From that time Ghana has had excess supply of power
that its supply for many years has been in excess of demand
that it has to be exporting power. Nigeria with all our wealth
and experience never for one day has been in the position
of supply even matching demand, not to talk of export. That
is the truth of the matter.
So, when we talk of uninterrupted power, when we talk of stable
supply, is it possible in a country where there is a big gap
between supply and demand to give stable and uninterrupted
supply? It is not possible! And in a case like this, if the
capacity is there and we are mismanaging it; say, the installed
capacity of say, 10,000 megawatts and due to incompetence
we are only giving the nation 2000; then the management has
a case to answer. But when you have an installed capacity
that is only between 3,000 and 4,000 and the demand is between
5,000 and 6,000 megawatts, what is the magic to be done?
Abuse in NEPA
When I say we are working very hard, I’m not saying
we are angels or 100 per cent perfect. Because in Economics
anything that is scarce, anybody involved in that business
would be faced with abuses and we have this in NEPA. I will
be fair to admit it. Anything that is scarce, very often you
will find out that there could be a culture there for abuse.
The people who are supposed to give you service, can now exploit
you by extortion and various forms of sharp practices. That
is the cause of the nature of the business. You will agree
with me that it will happen when in a locality where you have
a NEPA staff who decides who is going to get power and who
is not going to get. This creates temptation for abuse. So,
we have this problem and it has affected our business. Again,
this is a battle we have been fighting in a very structured
way. I would like you to have time to come and sit down with
our anti-corruption unit. We have taken the fight to the field.
It does not interest NEPA to give disciplinary workshops.
The number of people that have been weeded out in the last
12 months for sharp practices is more than the people that
have left with disciplinary cases in the last 10 years before
this period. And this coincided with the time we started this
campaign about two years ago. We have carried the campaign
to a point now that every local staff must publish his telephone
numbers. We have even brought in some independent people to
monitor and get customers complaints. Somewhere in Lagos,
we have the pilot unit of what we call Autonomous Customers’
Relations Centre, fully equipped with telephone lines and
faxes. They are not NEPA officials, but we pay them and their
job is for customers to tell them they are not getting proper
treatment from NEPA. They have direct access to this place
even up to my office. Various other strategies have been put
in place and one of them is this Summary Disciplinary Action.
Anytime there is a report on anti-customer behaviour by any
NEPA staff; the manager is given the free hand to take sanctions
immediately.
Normally, our disciplinary process is very cumbersome that
we have to set up ad hoc committees. But on cases of anti-customer
behaviours, with the co-operation of the union, we can now
give instant summary actions. These are some of the things
we have put in place to fight the problem we have and we are
winning. But you will agree with me that the best solution
is to make power available. If there is adequate power supply
in every neighbourhood, the NEPA staff will not have the opportunity
to stop or deny the customer of his right.
How we entered the mess
That is a question I can’t answer alone, we have to
answer it together. Honestly, as a nation, we have to answer
it together. How can we, with all the resources we have, not
have by now adequate electricity that is so fundamental to
other things? And we are talking about being the greatest
nation in Africa. We want to be the leading nation, we want
to be ahead of South Africa, we want to be like Malaysia and
we have not put our electricity right. This is really an issue
all of us in all honesty must admit, we as a nation we need
to start looking at ourselves.
Then, coming back to not having enough, one of the problems
we had to battle with was that we had not done enough to educate
the public on how bad things were in 1999 when this government
took office. That is an omission, I should be one of the first
to admit it. We should have done enough to let the people
know the state of the infrastructure, how it has been neglected.
Not only that, we should also have told the people the truth
on the true cost of putting it right and how long it would
take to put it right.
Building new power stations
What does it really cost to build a power station? A standard
project showed that on the average, for every megawatt, every
new capacity, you are talking about half a million dollar
per megawatt. So, if you want to put in 10 megawatts, that
is $5 million. If you want to put in 100 megawatts, that’s
$50 million. Now, if I am telling you as we are sitting down
here that our supply, everything is about 3,000; our installed
capacity, let's say 4,000 installed. And I am saying the demand
is about 6,000; if we say we want to close the gap between
demand and supply, it means you need 2,000 more megawatts
at half a million dollar per megawatt. That would be $1,000
million. Convert to naira and everybody will collapse. But
that is the truth of the matter. Go around and shop for gas
turbine all over the world, it will be between $400,000 and
$500,000. You can’t get it anything less than that.
Anybody can check that on the internet.
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