Nigeria’s export agreements, domestic gas-to-power needs require review, says Ofoegbu

DESPITE the abundant gas resources in the country, we still have issues of gas to power. What do you think is the way out?
We keep commissioning power generating plants without the required gas infrastructure. I had warned in the past that power supply would keep diminishing and we will find out that we are not making progress but rather retrogressing in the sector.

This is beginning to happen because we are getting shorter hours of power supply whereas we are commissioning many distribution and generation firms. The reason for this is because we did not implement an adequate gas master plan. It has not been fully implemented and you are beginning to put in place generating points on a master plan that is not implemented. Gas supply is not there.

We don’t have adequate gas supply. There are some power stations that we have in this country that don’t have pipes that take gas to them. Why should that be the case? Why should we not plan? Why should we not do the first thing first? Then you commission these massive elephants while there are no raw materials to power them. As a country, we also need to ask ourselves questions about our Father Christmas approach to our neighbours. We need to ask ourselves morale questions. We have short falls in domestic gas supply. What business do we have pumping gas to Ghana?

Of course, gas from Nigeria made people to say power doesn’t fail in Ghana. It was only until recently that they started having shortfall in gas as a consequent of failure of our supply chain. Why should we still bankroll the so called West African Gas Project, supplying gas to as far as Ghana, Burkina Faso and places like that when down here our power plants cannot work to capacity because of lack of gas? If they were in our position, would they do that for us? The answer is definitely No!
Late President Yar’Adua once threatened to declare emergency in the sector. Is that a line of thought you would advocate for the incoming government?

The incoming government must look at those agreements and any aspect of the agreement that compromises the comfort of Nigerians must be thrown away. Most of our regional partners and our sister countries are already finding their own gas. We must not wait until they jettison us. If things continue to move the way they are moving in Ghana, the country would have to cut off gas supply to Ghana. At the moment, they are increasingly entering into agreement with oil companies in their country to turn the gas from their fields into power. Why must we wait till that happens? I advocate a review of all those agreements, especially if any aspect of the agreement compromises our own comfort.

What are the prospects of using coal to solve the nation’s power supply needs?
Geologically falls within the major coal belts in the world. We have always been known for the coal deposits. For example, Enugu’s major source of revenue earning all through the colonial days and even till recently was coal. There are so many coal fields, mining shafts around Enugu and the Coal Corporation of Nigeria was one of the earliest corporations, just like the Railway Corporation, set up by the colonial masters in Nigeria.

It was very functional. The earliest power plant we had in this country – the Oji River Plant, was dependent on coal. Up till now, there are visible frames of cranes that move coal from the mines to the power station, and that was supplying power to the whole of eastern Nigeria and beyond before Kainji Hydro dam in Niger State came on board.

As soon as the war ended, the Oji River Power Plant was abandoned and then we started taking power from Kainji Dam to service the whole Nigeria, which became inadequate. The same thing happened to Afam Power Station as it was abandoned.
But there have been arguments that we have enough gas to satisfy local demands and service export…
We have gas. After all, we use to flare gas before. What is important is the infrastructure needed to feed this gas to domestic power plants. That is the origin of the so-called Gas Master Plan Project. The question is, has it been implemented?

Part of the problems is lack of networking. I mean administrative networking. The process of building the power plant falls within the authority of the Ministry of Power. The provision of the gas- the fuel- falls within the ambit of the Nigerian Gas Company, which is under the Ministry of Petroleum. There is no reason why proper networking shouldn’t exist. There is no reason why they shouldn’t tell each other the truth by slowing down the construction of these plants, or put them on.

But don’t tell people that power is to be supplied from there, because adequate gas supply is not available, or because the pipelines have been vandalized or whatever.

And every time they blame it on vandalism. Pipelines are not just vandalized. Not just anybody can tamper with these pipes. Let’s just stop killing a dog by giving it a bad name. How many times have you heard that there was an explosion of gas? It is always petrol. People can use buckets and collect petrol. But not gas. Besides, technologies have evolved. I was in South Korea and I was surprised that the power company could from an office in Seoul tell when a single watt of electricity leaks from its transmission line.

It shows on the screen immediately, and they rush in and they remedy it. If any transformer breaks down in the entire country, it immediately blinks and it shows the point, the coordinates, the GPS setting, and somebody is immediately alerted to get it sorted out. This country is rich enough. This country is endowed enough to do that. Even countries that are richer than us are exploring alternative sources than us.

Why should we lack power with all the heat and all the sun hours that we have in this country? Half of the power supply to Abuja should even be based on solar, especially for the satellite settlements. Why would we not explore solar that God has also blessed us with? Geothermal energy is there. Why will we not explore all these things that we have around here? A country like Kenya is generating geothermal electricity and is feeding it into its power grid. They have wind energy and have an agency for it.
Our solid minerals sector, from expert analysis, is a huge untapped sub-sector. Why do we still have low investment despite this?

Until recently, there was some form of apathy towards investment in the mining sector of the economy. This is not actually because the sector doesn’t have promise. This country is endowed with so much metallic and non-metallic minerals. But the key problem is that government did not put in place enabling environment for mining to take place. Mining and agriculture were the cornerstones of our economy, then came the era of oil boom or the so-called black gold and everybody disappeared from agriculture and the mining industry. Only lip service was then paid to these sectors. As a consequence, that sector of the economy began to die naturally and nobody wants to put money where they are not going to recover their money. Nobody wants to put money where government does not have a deliberate policy to encourage such an industry. This is one major reason why investors are not investing in the sector.

The other reason is that mining takes a bit of time recover funds. You have to do exploration, Environment Impact Assessment, and battle with the community because it is not like oil where you could go offshore and explore. For mining you must be on the ground and you must also have some pre-information which the government for some time was not providing and was not even investing in.

Let’s take the issue of the Geological Survey of Nigeria that was so respected in the world and in the commonwealth. It came to a point that even the roofs of the building were leaking so much that when we went there on a rainy day, water was pouring and was damaging some of the equipment in the building. The agency is supposed to give us baseline information on minerals that will encourage people to know where these minerals could be mined. But the agency was abandoned by government and now the reality is beginning to dawn on the country and we are beginning to come back.

The oil boom era has come and gone. With the drop in price of oil, government is beginning to realise that we must go back to our roots. We must go back and begin to look at the solid minerals sub-sector. And then of course, government should put in place the enabling environment to encourage mining. As of now, not much has been done but there has been a lot of meetings and pronouncements. But we want to see it happening, we want to see all those dead mining sites in Jos, Taraba and others being re-opened. The illegal mining going on now exposes people to all kind danger.

I want us to formalise the mining sector and even know what volumes are exported because at the moment this government cannot tell you what volume of any of our minerals are taken out of this country. This is done semi-illegally.