I hope I am on the same planet as Johnson Eze who described the privatization of PHCN which in fact was the “unbundling of the PHCN into its constituent units and selling off the majority control to core-investors.” Johnson called this privatization and I do not blame the youth as he may not know the difference between “privatization” and “auctioning to the highest bidder.”

True privatization is when a business is sold to the members of the public through a public offering of its shares to members of the public on the Stock Exchange or by private placement wherein enough people through a memorandum such as the way Transcorp PLC was privatized. What BPE did in case of PHCN unbundling was an AUCTION of the majority control to a privileged few through competing bids. To say that some euphoria greeted the success of the privatization of PHCN which Johnson described as “near perfect” even to the point of quoting former President Olusegun
Obasanjo, who by the Grace of God built Jebba and Shiroro Dams to say that what Director General of BPE John Dikki achieved in case of PHCN privatization has never been achieved before in Nigeria or in other parts of the world is nothing
more than praise-singing John Dikki of BPE and Namadi Sambo for a mediocre performance!

Ministry of Power had a proposal that aimed at true privatization of the electricity generating plants which would have
capitalized the assets on the Nigeria Stock Exchange to broaden private ownership and private-sector efficient control of public utilities thereby making available to the generating companies unlimited amount of capital to not only buy the assets but also working capital to expand and revamp the power generating companies. The few people that bought off the 51% control borrowed the money from banks and as soon as they paid for the assets they ran out of funds to work the plants they acquired. This lack of funds is the main reason for the inability of the generating plants to produce more power than was available when they took over the control of the generating plants! Not only did the Ministry of Power and the National Union of Electricity Employees had copies of the proposal to truly privatize PHCN, the top management of PHCN was aware of this “superior and workable proposal” to use the words of the Engineers at NUEE and I know that BPE was also briefed about this true privatization proposal. To now say that DG John Dikki who opted for a third
best alternative to privatization should be Knighted because of a “perfect” or “near perfect” performance in the AUCTIONING of the 51% control of PHCN to owners who lacked working capital can only happen in a Banana Republic of which Nigeria is not! A recent list of excuses by NERC Chairman, Dr. Sam Amadi about Nigeria’s inability to generate 6,000MW of electric power is a testimony to the fact that the privatization was less than sub-optimal! A successful privatization of PHCN would have resulted in the new owners putting more MWs on the national grid and for manufacturing plants to be using electricity produced by the GENCOs instead of some manufacturing plants
closing shop and relocating to Ghana while those that still operate in Nigeria are still using Generators and paying dearly for diesel fuel to run those “behemoth” generators to use Johnson’s word!

Johnson, the purpose of privatization is this, make the generating plants run better and produce more power; make the DISCOs provide consumers with more hours of electricity, bill them for power used not estimated bills; and make pre-paid
meters available to all consumers!

I am not here to bash Mr. John Dikki or Dr. Sam Amadi but I am here to show that Nigerians are better than what we are
currently experiencing. Nigerians are managing power generating companies both hydro and fossilized power plants all over the world! I know of Dr. Onyebuchi of Manitoba Hydro in Canada and others like that in Europe, Asia and the United
States. On the side of those who do not know what to do or who do not want to deliver the best for Nigeria like our John Dikki and Sam Amadi we also have people like Prof. Bart Nnaji, former Chairman of Presidential Task Force on Power and later as the Minister of Power who despite the clearly evident problems associated with gas-fired electric power plants continued to lament in 2011 that….”Mr. XYZ, my biggest problem is how to get GAS to the various Generating Plants that we have all over the place.” “If I can get gas to those plants I can generate 20,000MW![I think Dr. Nnaji was thinking about his Geometric Ltd. which was licensed in 2006 but has not produced 1kWH of Power in 2015!

Mr. XYZ told him “Sorry, Prof. I cannot help you with that, but you have underutilized hydropower resources in Niger and Oyo States and abundant coal supplies in Enugu, Kogi and now Benue States where you can generate more than 6,000MW of cheap electric power to complement the improved hydropower resources and Egbin Thermal plant which all together will generate more than 15,000MW of electric power by 2015! See my online response to Dr. Sam Amadi on how we arrive at 15,000MW of electric power for Nigeria in The Guardian of Friday, July 31!

“He that hath an ear, let him hear what the Spirit saith unto the churches” God bless the Federal Republic of Nigeria!