Engr. Cyprian O. Umeigbo, a former General Manager with the Power Holding Company of Nigeria (PHCN), revealed to Sun in Enugu recently, that “it was the previous military regime that brought the former NEPA down to its present sorry state.”
Excerpt.
Can we know a bit of your background so that the public will understand who we are talking with?
My name is Engineer Cyprian O Umeigbo, an Electrical Engineer by training, a member of the Council of Registered Engineers of Nigeria (COREN) and the Nigeria Society of Engineers (NSE). I got into the former NEPA which later became PHCN before it was privatized immediately I left the University some years back and rose to the position of a General Manager before I voluntarily retired just as the privatization was starting, to form my own company, Kanel International Limited, an electrical engineering company registered in Nigeria with over 80 workers. I have been in the practice of electrical engineering for close to 30 years now, our focus is on street lighting. That is just the summary of my person.
Having worked with the former PHCN and rose to the position of General Manager, what can you say is the real problem of that organization as an insider?
Thank you very much for this question because once the name NEPA or PHCN is mentioned before a journalist, this question must come up. Really, the issue with the organization before the unbundling came up is principally the problem of power generation. That is the main issue. I am talking as somebody who was involved in different departments. I was in-charge of distribution before I left. We have the problem of insufficient generation capacity then and even now. What that simply means is that we are unable to generate enough power for the consumer of electricity. That has led to the so called “load shading”, irregular power supply and all worth not. As long as this country cannot generate power in excess of demand, the problem will persist. I can tell you that once the issue of generation is properly tackled, about 80 per cent of the challenges facing the organization would have been taken care of.
But why has it not been possible to generate enough power all these while in view of the amount of money stated to have been put into that issue. It was alleged that the previous military regime was the culprit but since 1999 when the current democratic regime came into being, nothing tangible has been achieved, why?
What really happened was that during the era of the military, there was very poor funding for the power sector. The sector was grossly neglected in terms of funding. And it was an era you cannot speak your mind, not democratic society where you can say your mind and nothing will happen to you. So, everybody bottled up in their minds what was happening to NEPA then. And that era lasted for quite some time. Throughout that period, there was no investment in the area of power generation, in fact, power as a whole not just power generation. You know we have generation, transmission and distribution segments, there was no investment in any of this and infrastructure began to collapse steadily. You know, demand for power supply is a continuous thing and it was increasing while generation was decreasing. So, where you have this scenario where demand is rising steadily and generation is either stagt or decreasing, you cannot predict what will happen with the infrastructure. That was what exactly happened during the military regime. When we now moved to the civilian era, there was investment quite alright but it was not sustained. A flash on the pan investment in power sector will not address the need of that sector because it requires a steady investment over a long period to bring about stability. During the period of steady investment, we would have improved on our generation capacity. By then all related infrastructure like transmission would have received attention and distribution which is the last lap of the chain would also have received a boost. It is only then that we can sit back and begin to reap the gains of steady power supply. We know actually that there was the investment era during the former President Obasanjo regime but it was shot lived. The investment was quickly swallowed up by the suppressed demand that has been there. The only solution for steady power supply is huge investment in that sector.
But some of the problems of that sector were attributed to corruption. To many Nigerians, corruption is the real issue not the investment you are talking about because whatever comes could easily be embezzled or stolen by the corrupt officials, according to public opinion. What is your view on this?
I will say that corruption is endemic in Nigerian, nobody can deny this. But I don’t think that corruption is very responsible to the state we are today in the power sector. The power sector demands huge investment, very huge and steady. Mark my word, huge and steady because if you make it a flash in the pan activity, you will not get the desired result. But if you make it a sustained investment and then huge, the result will be very wonderful and everybody will see it and testify that yes, there is improvement in the power supply. As it is now, not much is happening in that sector.
What of the current system where all the generated power go to a central grid system and redistributed to all, some people argue that it is part of the problem because states or organizations who can generate should be allowed to do so and use what they generate the way it is done in other parts of the world, what do you say on this?
That is exactly where we are now because under the unbundled system, states can now generate and use their own generated power or market the product and collect revenue. So, that aspect has been taken care of by the new order in the power sector after the unbundling of PHCN. But like I stated before, investment in the power sector is not a child’s play. States that can venture into it must have to look at their purse before embarking on such project and complete it because starting may not be the problem but the ability to complete and commission is very important.
What is your view about the unbundling of PHCN, is it achieving the aim that prompted that undertaking?
I think that privatization is quite good but the spirit at which it was handled, I think, was faulty. This is because it was more of political than business interest. Even though in the eyes of the common man, it has been unbundled but the true picture is that the unbundling was not thorough. This is in the sense that very big players in the electricity business were not given adequate opportunity to participate. There were shut-out and it became an in-house political affair. That is why today, there has not been serious improvement in the sector. The power sector was just handed over to people with political connections and that is why not much investment is going on in the sector after the so-called unbundling. Before this time, government came up to say that privatization will do this or that like boosting power supply and opening up new frontiers of business but that is not happening there. But the policy is a good one although the programme was not properly implemented. There were flaws here and there with so many interests coming into play. But power sector is not something you politicize, it is either you do it right and people see it or you politicize it and people will also see the result. They used power sector to play politics in the past and everybody is now suffering it. Some people just took over the sector through political connections and now they can’t investment much because they are not real.
Why is it that the new investors are not eager to invest in metering but keep on extorting people with the old method of estimation billing?
I must tell you what happened. The truth was that those companies that acquired the unbundled PHCN are not following the changes given to them by the Nigeria Electricity Regulation Commission (NERC). The regulation is that they are going to deploy meters to all their customers because metering was identified as one of the key problems in the power sector. And they were given a mandate to procure meters enmass and meter every customer that has such issue. But in this country, we are where we are because of the corruption you just mentioned. These companies are not keeping to the rules given to them by NERC simply because most of them have discovered that if they get those metes and deploy them accordingly, that it is going to affect their revenue. They have discovered that billing customers on estimation gives them more money than metering. Therefore, they are reluctant to go into metering to customers.
How did you come into doing work for Enugu State government in the past 8 years in the area of street lighting, was it a case of presenting a proposal or your company was just invited?
What actually happened was that, when Bar. Sullivan Chime came into office there was this burning desire to lighten up Enugu city. He wanted to revamp the street lights already on ground in some places in Enugu. So, there was this advertisement which was placed in the dailies and my company bided and we were eventually adjudged to be the winner after the bid process. So, we were given the opportunity to showcase what we can offer. We were given some few roads where there had some existing street lights which were not functional to revamp and we did it successfully to the admiration of the governor. Because of the commitment and zeal we showed on the job, he was happy. You know, street light is not just installing poles, fittings etc, but the ability to ensure that the light comes on at night and go off in the day automatically. So, for the serious efforts we put on the few roads given to us at the initial stage, the government decided to give us more and eventually we discovered that the more roads we accomplished, the more we get. We have sustained the contract up till now and we are also doing the maintece.
What was the reaction of the people when they saw street lights on in the night?
If you know the city of Enugu before the street lights came on, you would discover that the capital was a ghost of itself especially at night. Movement at night was very difficult and economic activities were not there especially at night because people were afraid to move about along the dark roads and streets. Night life was generally non-existent. But when we commenced the street lighting project, it was like a magic. People thought it was a flash on the pan kind of thing, a political gimmick. They asked if it will be sustained, or can it be true? But they greeted the project with much joy. The kind of enthusiasm and joy we saw on the faces of people when we commenced the job was tremendous especially people who had seen this light work in the past.
What was your reaction when you heard that Enugu State won award as the state with the highest installed street lights in the capital in Nigeria?
I congratulated the governor and his government for the achievement and gave the glory to God. But it did not come to me as a surprise because as an electrical engineer who is involved, I know that such award was possible. We have been doing the street light work in Enugu with passion and I am involved in virtually every aspect of the job. I brought in my wealth of experience and knowledge to bear on the job. I worked with the former NEPA and later PHCN for many years and retired voluntarily as a general manager before I took charge of my own company. So, we were really very happy and I am proud it is my company that did the work that gave the state the award.
In doing this work, what are the difficulties you have faced?
We encountered so many difficulties but of course, we know that for a project like this, there would be some challenges. Part of the challenges we had initially was vandalism. It was like some people who were benefitting from the darkness of the past don’t want a change. Such people wanted to put a stop to what we were trying to achieve, that is, to light up the state. In other words, we met a stiff opposition initially because when we install our cables, they would go and remove them in the night. But through the efforts of the law enforcement agents, our company and members of the public, we were able to gradually bring it under control. The other problem which we have been experiencing and still experience is reckless motorists who hit our poles and damage the fittings and cause disruption on the light. But after each damage, we would go back to re-fix it and restore supply to the affected street or road. This aspect is very worrisome because it happens virtually every day. It has been a major challenge because in a week, we could record between 5-7 poles being knocked down. Maintece is not part of the agreement but we are pushing for that and hopefully it will be resolved.
What has been the relationship between your company and the Ministry of Works and Infrastructure that supervises your work?
We have a cordial relationship with the Ministry. The former Commissioner Engr. Goddy Madueke is a wonderful person, very thorough in whatever he does. He is very understanding too because when we put the issue of maintece before him, he was sympathetic to our plight but it is not what he could approve on his own. Apart from the old roads, we are the one handling all the new roads being built that government wants street lights to be installed. The Commissioner is a man who will not let go until the right thing is done. He is a core professional who believes in quality for any job he supervises. The quality of work we do attest to that. Our fittings are imported from Europe and not China. That is why it has stood the test of time in the past 8 years. It may interest you to know that each street light has a dedicated transformer and a standby generator. We do not depend on public transformer and this is why the light is always on in the night because whenever public power supply goes off, the standby gen automatically comes up, and when the public supply comes back, the gen set automatically goes off. That shows you how serious the state government takes the project and how passionate we are for the project. Governor Chime is someone who has passion for the development of the state. From the moment he came in, he was determined to make a difference and you can see the transformation which has taken place in the state. In the whole South-East, no state has seen the kind of infrastructure development that Enugu state has witnessed with the government of Sullivan Chime. He has done very well for the state and we are proud to be part of the success story especially in the area of road infrastructure.
How do you cope with relocation of public utilities before you start your work?
In our street light work, we don’t cut roads or deface the tarred road which has been asphalted before laying our cables. We use the modern method called boring, we bore a part of the road and create a tunnel through which we pass our pipe and lay our cable across. That has been the technology we are using in all the places we work. This system endeared the former governor of Enugu state, Sullivan Chime to us because we didn’t destroy any part of the asphalted road in other to do our street light work. Although the technology is expensive but we chose to do that to make us different from others who are our competitors .When we lay our cables and we didn’t cut the road, many people could not understand but as I said, this is a new technique to avoid destroying already asphalted road.