I am moving to Aba.
Kalu are u serious? You want to leave the Mega City, the land of Aquatic splendor, the centre of excellence in Nigeria to go to the dirtiest city in Nigeria?

Ok, if I offered you a choice to either live in New York City or Lagos Mega City? Which would you take? I would not dignify that question with a reply, Kalu take time ooh.

Ok let’s take away power from New York (Light to my Nigerian readers) where would you move to the big apple or the big yam? Hmmmm

Let me put this in perspective
Without power the traffic Lights and subways in the big apple wont work, so the traffic will be worse than Lagos, the big yam. Why? More cars in NY.
Without power the Emergency Rooms and hospitals wont work, or can you operate a MRI scanner or diabetes machine on batteries? For a week?
Without power no TV, refrigerators, microwaves, no PC, no IPod, No Cable, No Wal Mart, No Baseball, etc,
Without power, there will no heat in public schools so education becomes more expensive,
without power there will be no street lights, no Times square, so tourism drops, employment drops, crime rises again,
without Power the 911, and other emergency lines don’t work so no Fire, Ambulance or Cops,
without power no lifts will work, so all those skyscrapers in Manhattan become useless, wall street shuts down, people get sacked, unemployment , crime rises,
without power JFK shuts down, so no international airport in New York,
without power industries cant produce jack, no Starbucks, no Laundromats, so more people get laid off ,
without power…..Kalu we get the point.

Without Power, the big apple becomes the big yam, no street lights, crime on the streets, no public education or health, monster traffic jams. Plus you still pay taxes and freeze in the big apple. Hmmmm
So why Aba? Why not Abuja? Because in three months Aba will commission their very own 188 mw Independent Power Project, the Aba IPP built by Geometric Power at a cost of just $385 million with funding from the International Finance Corporation, the European Investment Bank, Emerging Africa Infrastructure Fund, Stanbic and Diamond Bank.
Kalu, you were making small sense b4 ooh, so? Do you know how many power plants are in Nigeria? Is there power? Well take a look at the sponsors or fund providers again, do you see any FGN? No, So? This is a private sector driven initiate to provide power, power contracts will be signed with the consumers, you can sue and be sued, and they are working for profit not salary. Again Kalu Lagos, the Mega city had their own IPP, built by Enron, there are still blackout in Lagos, so what the difference? How can they separate NEPA/PHCN from ABA IPP?

That is the beauty of the ABA IPP, the promoters went to Obasanjo and said Sir, we want to build this plant, we don’t want your money, but can you give us Aba as an exclusive territory to supply power to at a commercial price. OBJ agreed. It's this clause that will make this IPP a success. Aba will be an island supplied exclusively by the Aba IPP. Bola Tinubu had foresight, he brought the Enron power barges, and after strong resistance from the FGN he was finally allowed to generate power and sell to the National grid to supply Lagos. The plan was to channel to power back to Lagos, it didn’t happen, NEPA/PHCN/OBJ (the same mama born dem) simply put the Lagos/Enron/IPP into the national grid, and it as-you-were in Lagos in terms of power supply.
So won’t this new power station be expensive? Can ordinary people afford it? Right now ordinary Nigerians are spending N40-60 to generate 1 Kilowatt* Diesel is N75 per liter (if you can find it) the second richest Nigerian, a $ Billionaire on Forbes list, got these by selling Diesel, that tells a lot. (I’m not mad at him, he is an entrepreneur. That will be like blaming pure water sellers for spreading Typhoid, where is Water Works?)

Ask any Nigerian if will pay double to get power even for 12 hours a day, what do you think his answer will be? ask any manufacture or bank manager to pay triple his current NEPA/PHCN bill and get power from just 8am-5pm, what do you think his answer will be? In Nigeria we pay NEPA/PHCN bills and get no power, every body has a generator, from the 1 KVA “I better pass my neighbor” to massive CAT generator. you can’t walk the streets and make a call, diesel fumes, and noise. Every Nigeria child first learned word is NEPA, no kidding, they see their parents say “ NEPA” and look angry.
So Kalu you are saying the reason why ABA IPP/Geometric will succeed with this power IPP and Lagos and the Federal govt have failed is not the money- $16billion, the market -140m Nigerians, the will or desire, but the fact that the private sector, has simply been allowed to sell power without interference from NEPA/PHCH/FGN? Yes.

If you were GE, and you came to Nigeria to solve the power problem, the solution is easy. build a power plant in every local govt in Lagos, take Lagos off the national power grid, since Lagos consumes 60% of the power generated, that means more power can go to the other states, it’s a no brainer. So Kalu why don’t they just do that? Because the Federal Government controls the price you can sell power to the national grid. They say if they allowed consumers buy power from GE direct, GE will over charge consumers, so they are “protecting” consumers by fixing the price GE can sell power. But Kalu that ridiculous, we still buy Diesel at N75 even though oil prices have fallen, why are they not "protecting” us? Well na you talk am.
Point is, government has no business in business, and power is big, very big business. If you open the market to all comers, then you will see people saying ok, I will sell power to Lekki alone, ok we will target Badagry, etc you will solve this problem, simply focus on Lagos. It’s the political will to simply open up the market.

Let me give you an example with mobile phones in Nigeria. No matter the model and features of any phone in Nigeria, the price starts high (because demand is high) and as supply meets demand it falls. Everybody is allowed to jump on a plane, go to Dubai and import any phone he likes, they is no monopoly on phone importation, so the prices rises and falls with demand, consumers are happy, jobs are created, MTN and Co are happy, govt makes money from calls. However, if there was a Ministry of Mobile Phones, the Minister will simply publish a list of “approved” phone coy, and start “selling” mobile phone import licenses. There will then be another parastatal called Department of Mobile Phones who will “test” your phones to ensure they comply with international standards , for a fee of course, so your phone price is not determined by market forces but by ineffective govt policies. It this not why Petrol and Diesel are expensive in Nigeria?
Kalu again I ask why can they just open up the markets? why can’t they allow anyone import diesel, bring in power etc? Well don’t tell anyone I told you, this is just between me and you. If they sold NEPA and NNPC, how will they fund PDP?

Still our problem, we can solve it, Vexing isn’t working, I need another strategy……..suggestions?

Kalu

Ps the power probe committee report has been handed to a “committee” to review. hmmm ever heard of death by committee?