Nigeria Content Online

Fresh from their one day strike that left
Nigerians underwhelmed and the presidency obviously scrambling to
prevent a disruption of the launch of its power plan, staff of the
Power Holding Company of Nigeria (PHCN), our spectacularly inept
electricity utility, have announced a resolve to fight the federal
government were it to go ahead with the plans to dramatically
restructure the industry.

The planned deregulation of the sector will
enthrone private electricity suppliers , to be watched over by a strong
regulatory agency.

This plan will usher in an environment very much
like what is happening in the telecommunications sector now, where
competition is stiff among operators and creativity has brought much
choice and access to telephones, and now the internet, to the customer.

Both sectors used to have a lot in common,
synonymous as they were with powerful, unaccountable and ineffectual
state-backed behemoths – the PHCN or its previous incarnation as NEPA
for the power sector, and Nigerian Telecommunications (NITEL) for the
telephone sector.

Now, in less than a decade, NITEL has become so
irrelevant that many younger Nigerians would be hard pressed to believe
tales that the company used to be held in awe by Nigerians and that its
workers were little gods that customers had to pamper and fear – either
to get connected to the phone lines or to keep them connected. The
state monopoly was an epitome of corruption and inefficiency.

The power sector workers have some genuine reasons
for their cautious approach to the federal government’s power plan. For
instance, there have been several policy somersaults over the past six
years that even the most hardened staff of the PHCN should by rights
now have a healthy skepticism of government’s seriousness about truly
reforming the sector.

One of the offshoots of the reform is that some
funds are to be paid to the workers as part of the monetization of
their benefits. This goes back to some seven years and was actually the
reason given by the workers for their last strike. The federal
government has started paying some of the arrears – some N57 billion in
compensation, including retirement benefits, is said to have been
deposited with the Central Bank to effect this – but the fact push has
to come to shove before the payment arrives is some attenuating factor
in the workers’ favour.

The electricity workers have also expressed worry
about the expected privatization of the sector – and the fact that the
presidential adviser to power, Barth Nnaji, himself ran a private power
generation company (or at least one to be when the plant he is building
comes on stream.) Going by the explanation of the workers, Nigerians
would actually be at the mercy of these private operators in the area
of charges. Posturing as the savior of the Nigerian customer, they have
warned that the pricing of electricity could remain within spending
ability of Nigerians only if the PHCN is allowed to continue to
dominate the industry More realistically, they also expressed fears
that the career of electricity workers might be jeopardized by the
private operators’ expected fixation on the bottom line rather than the
welfare of their workers.

The best answer to the fears of the electricity
workers is for them to ponder the telecommunications sector, for the
experience of that sector is the most relevant to their situation.
There is no doubt that the only way the country could get anything like
near the volume of power it needs is to liberalise the sector and
involve the private sector. And by all accounts workers in today’s
telecom sector are by far better paid than under the Nitel monopoly.

The country has spent hundreds of billions of
naira on the sector in the last eight years and the volume of
electricity generated has remained stuck around 3000 megawatts—same as
40 years ago. It is evident, as the workers themselves have kindly
pointed out, that pumping more money into the sector with the present
crop of PHCN leadership in office is like throwing money into the ocean.

There is no doubt that some workers would lose
their jobs. But those with the right frame of mind and attitude who
prepare themselves to work with the private operators would be better
for it. There is little that doubt that the telecommunications industry
has continued to be one of the more attractive industries for young
graduates. The payment structure therein is enough to make NITEL
workers choke on their tangled wires.

And on the issue of charges, Nigerians would
rather stick their lot with those who can provide them with regular
electricity. Even as it is, government has promised to increase the
tariff on the non-existent power supplied to Nigerians by the PHCN.

It would therefore appear as if the most
constructive thing electricity workers could do for the country is to
work with the presidential task force to evolve the most efficient and
workable power generation and distribution system for the country.
Threatening to shut down the system is hardly salutary. It might even
hasten the desire of Nigerians to get of the whole underperforming lot.