How Buhari can stop DisCos, GenCos’ swindling of citizens

…plus how politicians sold power sector to themselves under Jonathan

By Bashir Adefaka

“We had the Code of Conduct that ensured that no member of the management or the board actually could buy any of the assets that we were selling.  The electricity privatization”, under the PDP administration of Jonathan, “unfortunately was not handled that way.  If you look at all these Discos and Gencos, unfortunately, some of us saw it that time, but there wasn’t much we could do because of the rush and political thing it had become.  There is in each and every one of them at least one or two ‘big masquerades’.  That is not how to do privatisation,” Dr. Shamsudeen Usman said at 26 October 2017 lecture of Nigerian Society of Engineers.

Despite the fact that some of us are not economists, being journalists we are told to know little about everything.  Reason we can put our mouths in matters of medicine, tertiary institution system and tell doctors and ASUU who are mischievously using strike actions as tools to destroy the progress of Nigeria that they are indeed part of the same problems they complain or go on strike for.  If their intention is pure, there shouldn’t have been reason for ASUU of some kind in Ibadan to go into damaging struggle against the doing-well University of Ilorin because it refuses to join in any strike for 17 years.

That being said, it is the same reason we can put our mouths in the technicality called the sales of NEPA or PHCN split into DisCos and GenCos and ask some questions.  And where we are not satisfied we put a call across to the authorities to do the needful.  And the needful in the case of our findings regarding the activities of DisCos and GenCos since they started in the last leg (six) of People’s Democratic Party (PDP’s) 16 years of hold on Nigeria’s economy is for the All Progressives Congress (APC) Federal Government to revoke the licences granted those buyers and re-issue same to new, patriotic minded business people who will ensure, not only that they follow the rules of business but also, that they make the satisfaction of Nigerian consumers their priority in doing business.

Particularly the DisCos, that is, the Distribution Companies including Ikeja Electric (IE), Ibadan Distribution Company (IBEDC), Benin Electricity Distribution Company (BEDC), Eko Electric, etc, have all failed in the discharge of responsibilities they should carry out to the satisfaction of the people of their respective operation areas before or even while they then settle down to count their profits.

We are aware of the fact that the same PDP-led Goodluck Ebele Jonathan government that split the PHNC into all of these acronyms of DisCos and GenCos put a check mechanism in place in the form of Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission (NERC), which to the best of our knowledge capacity has worked hard to ensure that these private power companies owners do not shortchange the people whose paid taxes were the reason the power stations were able to come alive in the first place before they were put to sales.

But a check on their output as per how they have fulfilled or delivered on the expectations of the regulatory commission for the good of the country showed that they are at zero compliance.

Anyone of the DisCos is a shortchanger.  They still subject their respective customers to buying their equipment for them (the companies) to work.  Customers are still made to buy wires with which power supply is taken from transformer to their respective homes.  They still contribute money to buy transformer and electric poles.  They are the ones who are responsible for everything that DisCos should ordinarily do as required by their businesses but the power distributors force the people to taking up those responsibilities because of one of their particular claims, “who takes us to court and win us?  At one of their offices in Lagos (this is verifiable), one staff even confirmed to us that “Yes, we beat customer who doesn’t know how to talk to us” and he even threatened to be one of us when an issue ensued regarding how they illegally disconnected our light without we owing. That guy was later confirmed by the office as a casual staff and the manager apologized. But how many other Nigerian electricity consumer know their rights to push to the level we did?

These DisCos refuse to give prepaid meters to Nigerians because they know that doing so will make them work for their money.  Instead, they continue to issue estimated bills and in a way that make them look straight like a gang of economic and financial criminals out to swindle the proorest of the poor without minding whose ox is gored.  They even hire casual staff who are not paid by the company but whose source of income is dependent on their ability to swindle or amount of frustrations they can inflict on customers through indiscriminate albeit illegal disconnection of people’s lights.  It happened to a home which presented its bills payment intact and yet was disconnected.  It took the effort of one of the DPOs in Ikeja Electric business area of Lagos to reconnect the light when the so called official supervisor tried to justify the illegal action saying he has a lawyer and Chief Security Officer.

That is the extent to which DisCos bequeathed to Nigerians by the PDP ‘big masquerades’, including Olusegun Obasanjo and Jonathan, have failed.

And if a government, seen as serious and committed to giving back to Nigerians the welfare and good life they lost over decades of years ago and which is in now power, really wishes to succeed, it must come in tandem with the reality on ground to know that the structure of these shoddy business arrangement that brought the current DisCos and GenCos into place must be demolished completely.  In demolishing it, you are not being asked to stop the privatized arrangement but to just identify new, more sincere and patriotic people who believe and want to make money – not from the tears and sweat of the already impoverished masses but who will want to see the people happy while they rush on daily basis to banks with their economic and financial gains, earned with conscience that posterity will speak well of them.

Even before the presidential election of March 28, 2015 I had been talking about the above captioned actions taken by the then ruling PDP. The fact that Dr. Shamsuddeen Usman, who was Minister of National Planning Commission under the administration (of Jonathan) confirmed my complaint two years after (in 2017) only further lays credence to my complaint.

It is however worrisome that some Nigerian lawyers and media practitioners who should know more than I do in this area of problem are themselves putting the current administration on (needless) toes over the issues including of power.

One of the lawyers, Barrister Monday Onyekachi Ubani once said specifically that he would only take Buhari to be a performer if he could fix the power problem facing Nigerians.  He said this at a time it obviously came clear that the Buhari’s effort at improving the power system was no longer hidden but that much as it moved things forward, the more the same people who sold DisCos and GenCos to themselves frustrated it.  That was seen in the bombing of oil installations by those Niger Delta Avengers who claimed to be avenging the defeat of Jonathan by Buhari.

It is expected that while some activist lawyers are talking about putting a government on toes, they should have cleared their own conscience by also helping the government deliver by balancing the criticism, putting the people, too, on their toes by educating them on their role in partnering a serious, non-corrupt government in the business of rebuilding an already economically looted, politically damaged with impunity, socially demoralized, judicially disobedient, ethnically and religiously divided nation like Nigeria.

These lawyers failed in this social responsibility but the same Ubani has been up and down through his social media handles denigrating President Muhammadu Buhari in connivance, perhaps, with the Olusegun Obasanjo-led Third Force coalition (now ADC political party) which has been so loud telling the world that the APC-led Buhari government has failed and that the President should not seek re-election in 2019.  But when President Buhari, who for long has cautiously watched his steps about replying Obasanjo’s surprisingly sudden antagonism against his government, asked a simple question: “After you spent $16 billion on giving power to Nigeria, where is the power?” He started ranting pointing to an Egba court called “MY WATCH”.

I am yet to read a post on Facebook wall of Barrister Ubani or any lawyer who holds his position against Buhari speaking or writing about that latest development exposing the Obasanjo’s allegedly criminal foundation laid for the coming of today’s mischievous DisCos and GenCos. Yet they want to earn fame being seen as running Buhari government and APC down while they keep silent when beneficiaries of the loots like another lawyer Olisa Metuh are deliberately falling down on their own in courtroom to escape justice, credit to Justice Abang.

And to worsen the matter, some vocal media practitioners, rights and anti-corruption bodies locally take side with the evils ongoing against the effort of this government to give Nigeria back to its rightful owners – Nigerians –  away from the usual grip of the hitherto few “Owners of Nigeria” who are the authors and sponsors of all the confusions being propagated currently either in hike in prices of items in the market, hardship as a result of insufficient money in circulation, the fathomed “herdsmen” killings now seen to be some state-financed militia killings, Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN)-led anti-Buhari politicization of ethno-religion resembling criminal issues, and so on and so forth.

We have all seen the attitude of Amnesty International and we have seen the reports of Transparency International and the efforts of the local Civil Society Organisations whose voices are heard only when corrupt and criminal people are being picked up by the police for onward transmission to court for prosecution and they call that either violation of human rights in Nigeria especially when those alleged looters start by either jumping out of police vehicle or falling down in courtrooms or are being brought to court on wheel stretcher.  Some of the reports even derided the anti-corruption effort of the government saying it is one-sided, without bothering to liaise with government before they concluded on writing their reports.  Alhaji Lai Mohammed however did well telling it straight to the face of international board of the Transparency International last week Friday May 25, 2018 when the members visited him in Abuja that their anti-corruption organisation and civil societies affiliated to it locally in Nigeria have never supported the anti-corruption fight of the Federal Government as, according to him, they take side with looters.

And it is in the light of these foreigners’ misrepresentations of facts about current development of government in their own country of birth and of doing business that media practitioners at home prefer to project the Buhari government.  That is clear in a newspaper report this Sunday May 27, 2018 saying “only the government and men around the President believe that the government is doing well”.

Much as Transparency International’s report was unsatisfactory to any mindset, there is no denying the fact that they were informed by sources within the country which means the international anti-corruption organisation, TI, must have been misinformed in putting those reports together about the state of the anti-corruption war ongoing in Nigeria.

There is also no denying the fact that the rights group, Amnesty International too, must have been misinformed by sources within the country about the anti-insurgency war by the government of the day.  Facts of those misinformation can be glimpsed into in the attitudes of our local activist laywers and media practitioners and this is not good contribution expected by those supposed stakeholders in nation-building at a time like this when all hands must be on deck to support President Muhammadu Buhari Administration against the desperation of those few “Owners of Nigeria” in actualizing the return of “Ownership of Nigeria to Nigerians”. That is by the way.

With further issues that I had raised especially on the social media and in some of my published articles this year about how the DISCOs owners who are PDP or sympathisers including former President Olusegun Obasanjo and Jonathan himself are ensuring the frustration of Nigerians’ access to utilisation of power the Buhari government has made effort to generate through their (still owned) GENCOs, it is hoped that this APC government will launch a probe into the process and revoke the Power sale or licenses and reissue them to more patriotic technocrats whose want to see Nigerian enjoy and smile while they as business people rush to banks on daily basis counting their own economical and financial gains.

My call at this time is not a call by Bashir Adefaka, a Nigerian media practitioner, but the call of the very masses of the Nigerian people and it is obviously premised on the fact provided by one of the actors of the shoddy sales of PHCN, Dr. Shamsudeen Usman, who was Minister of National Planning under the People’s Democratic Party (PDP)-led Administration of Goodluck Ebele Jonathan in the last six of 16 years of the grip of the hitherto muchmouthed “Africa’s biggest political party billed to rule for 100 years”.

At a lecture of the Nigerian Society of Engineers, Usman, as if being programmed to confess, had said in what was reported a section of the media as “How we sold DisCos, GenCos to ourselves under Jonathan”.  In explaining this he revealed how PDP politicians and officials in the administration jostled for shares in the power generation and distribution companies that were privatised in 2013.

He reportedly spoke in Abuja at the 26th October Lecture of the Nigerian Society of Engineers where he said government officials who ordinarily should have been neutral in the privatisation exercise were, however, guilty of foul plays and used their positions to leverage their interests in the exercise secretly.

The former minister said at the NSE lecture, which was delivered by its former president, Mustafa Shehu, that most of the transaction principles often included and followed in the privatisation of government’s assets were sidestepped during the sale of the power assets to private investors.

He said the outcome of the power privatisation was heavily influenced by political considerations against economic or technical capacities of the eventual preferred bidders.

The ex-minister then linked parts of the challenges facing the sector to the alleged foul plays.

Usman, who did not mention names even when asked, said: “I was part of the power privatisation and I am not going to extricate myself.  It is a collective responsibility and I am not comfortable with the speed at which we rushed that exercise.  I was the first Director General of TCPC (Technical Committee of Privatisation and Commercialisation), which is the agency that started privatisation in this country in 1988” under the military Administration of General Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida.

He continued, “We had our office in Lagos and we did the first privatisation in this country.  As at that time, we had the Code of Conduct that ensured that no member of the management or the board actually could buy any of the assets that we were selling.  The electricity privatization”, under the PDP administration of Jonathan, “unfortunately was not handled that way,” he said.

“If you look at all these Discos and Gencos, unfortunately, some of us saw it that time, but there wasn’t much we could do because of the rush and political thing it had become.  There is in each and every one of them at least one or two ‘big masquerades’.  That is not how to do privatisation.

“You don’t sell because of some people who are in the government.  You sell because they have demonstrated the expertise and a lot of people rushed into it because they think electricity is like telecoms without even understanding the industry.”

Usman, who expressed disappointment over certain development in the country, said Nigeria lacks implementation and not planning.