Power to the people, not the private sector

Date: 16 June 2015

Nigerians have been blackmailed into believing that there was no solution to the electricity challenges without privatisation. Politicians have sold off electricity infrastructure to their friends for ridiculously small amounts of money, spent huge amounts of public funds in a questionable fashion and laid off thousands of workers. And yet still more Nigerians than ever live without electricity.

The privatisation of energy in Nigeria has been a spectacular failure. We’ve been fed on promises of stable electricity for over a decade, but the majority of Nigerians have to depend on themselves to provide their own power. Millions of homes generate their own electricity with battery inverters and gasoline generators, with public power supply being seen as a back-up at best.

The new privatisation investors are only concerned with how much money they can recoup in as short a time as possible. Actually providing electricity does not feature on their list of priorities. That’s why they have drastically increased the price of electricity and introduced fixed charges – regardless of whether they provide electricity or not.

Even if the privatisation process did ultimately lead to better power supply, the truth is that with the recent frightening increases in the cost of electricity, the vast majority of Nigerians won’t benefit from better supply as they can’t afford it – 67% of the people in Nigeria live on less than $1.25 a day. So you have to ask the question, who is benefiting from the privatisation of energy, as it certainly isn’t the people of Nigeria.

Nigeria has enough financial, human and natural resources that it shouldn’t need aid. The country remains relatively poor however, because of the combination of western companies extracting those resources without benefiting the vast majority of Nigerians, and because successive leaderships have failed to harness the vast potentials of the country. This is especially true when it comes to the provision of energy. Vast sums of money have been spent by successive governments, but improvements haven’t materialised. And that’s exactly what is happening still under privatisation – the power sector is simply mired in a new kind of corruption.

The best use of UK aid money in the power sector would be to strengthen the oversight of institutions to ensure that government expenditure in the power sector actually goes towards tangible targets and deliverables. Currently, such institutions are either weak or non-existent.