Mr.James Olotu is the Managing Director of Niger Delta Power Holding Company(NDPHCN) and a fellow Chartered Institue of Accountants (FICAN). In this interview, he speaks about the ongoing NIPP and the challenges his group has encountered so far.
Excerpts:

*Mr.James OlotuManaging Director,Niger Delta Power Holding Company (NDPHCN) .

A lot of issues came up during the power probe such  that there was impression created that NIPP does not exist. Bearing this in mind  how will you describe to Nigerians a typical engineering project within the context of NIPP?

That is a very interesting question I love it. And this is the bane of the society where we are, people don’t understand and I think it’s our fault also that we don’t go out deliberately to educate the people. I think the blame is partly ours. You asked a question saying we should use a lay man’s language. Let me start by saying that power is very, very expansive, highly capital intensive in nature. It has a gestation period of nothing less than four to seven years depending on the technology you use.

If you are using gas, it’s faster, so it takes four years. If you are using water, which is hydro, it takes longer it takes a lot of effort to  built that kind of dams we have in kainji, shiroro or Jebba. In any project whatsoever, you have the project broken into phases. You have the planning phase which you might call feasibility stage.

Project   planning includes a deliverables: a deliverable is the feasibility report and the engineering drawing and designs.
Then you move from approval of engineering designs and drawings to making procurement. You move from procurement to erection and construction. In a typical power project, the feasibility stage, the design stage takes longer period and the reason for this is: planning involves making a choice for your objective timeline  and  budget.

Planning also involves knowing the kind of infrastructure you have in a country. What do I mean by infrastructure? For instance, you know  that  you are going to import equipment like turbines for water or for fuel. Let me be more specific now and talk about the kind of equipment we imported which is basically gas oriented.

The NIPP consultant had looked at their budget, the time frame of the intervention they want to bring into Nigeria, they now discover that the only power technology they can use is gas to meet that time frame and budget. Again, it was discovered that we have the gas. At least every lay man knows that Nigeria has been flaring gas for years before I was born.

So they felt that instead of flaring this gas, why not convert the gas into the energy that is required to power these turbines. So, let’s locate the gas turbines nearer to those areas where the gas is potentially said to be available.

Thirdly, having gotten the land, can you evacuate the power to all crannies of Nigeria because the investment comes from federal, states and local governments which means even though you site power plant in say Niger Delta area, you still have to take the power to Sokoto, Kaduna, Yola, Ibadan and Enugu. So you must have the potential for the capacity to evacuate the power.

And I told you before that one of the problems with the PHCN network was that we have low capacity generation, transmission, distribution as well as low capacity gas infrastructure. So you must do all of these at the same time if you are going to improve the power supply by even one single cent.

And usually there is a ratio for doing that. If you have a capacity for say 3,000MW of power, you have a network that can take 3,500MW . Then you have a distribution that can take even more than that. So that there will be no congestion in the network. Planning does all that and decides where you take the power to. Where are the load centers that can take this power?

Planning involves identifying whether you have the machinery to handle the kind of equipment you are importing. Let me give you an instance, one of our turbines was placed in Onne, it was delivered in Onne from a ship. The ship that came from America bringing this equipment had an inbuilt crane, very high powered crane that could lift 220 pounds of equipment. They charge for it.

When it was time for us to move that particular turbine to the site on a badge, there was no single equipment in Nigeria that could lift that tonnage and put it on the badge and deliver it at Onne. We had to wait for the next consignment of shipment with that capacity before we could discharge consignment.

Planning also involves knowing whether your roads are okay to evacuate equipment from the ports to plant site because these equipment are sensitive equipment. They call them impact sensitive equipment. If it shakes, something will go wrong because they have coil and oil and tiny pieces of items inside them and if they shake, that can destroy and they are very expensive.

All planning does therefore, is that it tries to envisage whatever issues that you will likely face as you go forward in your project and puts solutions to them so that when you eventually arrive at that point, you have already known what to do. That is faster. That is why most of the time the planning stage of a project is usually two, three years.

It takes a long time therefore, to get that engineering design through. A typical example of that is that an architect of a normal building comes and sits with you on a regular basis, he looks at your plan, your survey, he goes to the site and takes soil test to see that it is solid or soft. It takes experts to do this for him, at the end of the day, he now comes to ask you what kind of house do you have in mind?

Procurement is another ball game entirely, none of these equipment are manufactured in Nigeria. Ninety nine per cent of these equipment are not manufactured in Nigeria, one per cent is because we have cement , sand, and  iron rod in Nigeria. Importation requires that you identify a manufacturer. Now there are many manufacturers but limited power equipment companies across the globe.

In most cases you have to queue if you place an order for  Power equipment  and it takes six months for small transformers to two years or two an half for big ones to be manufactured.

The thing is that it’s presumed that the engineering work has been properly done, the procurement of the materials solid, from the right sources, the right quality at the right price, and the erection which is the final stage is just a matter of time.

You know it is surprising that these elements were not put on the table or were not allowed on the table while they were doing the power probe the other time. Maybe one will ask why was this opportunity not available to explain to people that this thing is not deliverable as expected like this?
A lot of water has passed under the bridge.

I’ll rather just say that Nigeria is a developing country, we have our challenges, our suspicions of one another, our hopes and aspirations, our differences, and these are not things that we should continue to harp on. We must begin to trust each other, we must begin to educate each other, we must begin to understand one another and we must all focus on the Nigeria that belongs to all of us and do things in such a way as to be able to deliver dividends of democracy to our people efficiently and effectively.

When the NIPP probe was on, the Accountant-General of the federation educated the whole public by saying that NIPP as at that time had only $3.07 billion funded to it and that about $1.78 billion of that amount  was held in Letters of Credit (LC). And letters of credit is not money available to the contractor just like that.

It is a financial instrument that bridges the gap of trust between the client and the contractor and the manufacturer. It tells the manufacturer,  that don’t worry, go ahead and manufacture what I told you to do for me and supply it. At the moment where my engineer certifies that you have done so and that the product meets my specification, you‘ll go ahead and draw down on that money. But before you draw down on that money, you must satisfy these conditions. So it is money that’s available, yes, but it’s not available to that contractor.

What they call funded is different from payment to the contractor. There is a difference between funded project and paid for project. Funded means there is money set aside. In this particular instance, it is in form of letters of credit and that letters of credit have not been drawn down but in the books you may see LC 100 per cent. Then you say how can you pay 100 per cent of the job when he has only done 20 per cent of the job? That’s corruption. No, it’s LC, I didn’t say I paid him a cheque or a bank draft.

I said Letters of Credit. And the thing is that no serious manufacturer, none, will start manufacturing such expensive state-of-the-art equipment that is not available off the shelf, they are not available off the shelf. If you start a process you must end it. So when a man starts a process, and then half way he says sorry I change my mind, do you know the loss he’s going to incure? So he must be sure you are a serious person and the only way he can be sure of that is to use your banking instrument to provide him that assurance.

So, those are the issues but like I said, let’s forget about the past. Nigeria is tired of the past history and all those kind of things. Let’s move into what we must be doing henceforth.. NIPP in its entirety today, is going to give about 4,774MW of power when completed. It’s a programme that was designed in 2004 to meet the demands of 2006, we are in 2010. The question I’m asking is has Nigeria remain static since then? Don’t we have more MWs in the society now than before? Are we not more sophisticated today than then? Is our power demand the same as then?

Are you now seeing the challenges that even this 4,774MW worth of brand new equipment coming into the system will not solve the problem immediately? It will relieve us. So there must be a programme of continued development of the power industry. There must be a sustainable development programme consistent with the aspirations of Nigeria. And you heard what Mr. President said when he visited to Akwa Ibom state recently, what did he say? Don’t expect that we have crossed the Rubicon because until we start having 40,000MW, 50000MW, we are not there yet.

And to drive home his point carefully, South Africa has about 48 million people but South Africa has 48,000MW and they have 8000MW as a backup, just in case something happens, an earthquake or something of that nature and you need to call in extra capacity just to make sure that things don’t go wrong. 48,000MW to 48 million people. Now look at that to Nigeria. And South Africa has not stopped. They still continue to invest in power.

Look at the feat they demonstrated during the last World Cup, it’s because they have the power to do that. If you don’t have power, how do you handle technology? All those lighting you saw that day, it was a rain of commentary in credit to South Africa but because they have power. So Nigeria must go ahead to do that.

In specific terms, how much have been the government and other stakeholders’ financial commitment to the project so far? How much has NIPP cost us?
That’s a nice one. I’ll divide it into two. Prior to the probe, I don’t like the word probe. Prior to 2007 May, you know what I mean, the funding of NIPP project was about $ 3.07 billion. Funding.  You  now know the difference between funding and payment.

Now when eventually after the two and half years’ suspension which I must say, was the greatest mistake of Nigeria. That’s the greatest shortcoming of Nigeria. You don’t start a project such as this and because of any reason whatsoever stop it and stop it for two and half years in  a country that is aspiring to quickly change its fortunes; and knowing that power is the ingredients for changing that fortune.

What are the implications of that stoppage even as you complete the financial matter?
The implication of that stoppage, when NIPP is finished, we will write a book and government will publish it hopefully, to say this is the implication. This is how not to do a project. When we come to that  point we will be able to do that maturely without necessarily blaming anyone. It’s a lesson learnt by all of us. We have made mistakes all of us. So before then, there was $3.07 funding, when eventually it was revived all the stakeholders further contributed $5.375 billion to continue to fund the project to completion. Before I close on that, let me say something. Don’t blame the probe panel alone, some things were not right originally.

The media must understand this. The real trigger of the problem started from the fact that the excess crude oil account was the source of funding for NIPP. The excess crude oil account is owned  by Nigerians represented by  the their three tiers of government i.e Federal ,state and local. At that time, the then President got the understanding of the state and local governments to the effect that it could go ahead and use it for power development. It was an understanding. It was said by some people that it was not legal enough.

That  the understanding was not legal or backed by constitutional provision hence they took the case to court. And the court intervened. It’s all the starting of this stoppage. When President Yar’Adua came on board, I briefed him about our challenges ,what the issues are and the way forward. Based on my brief  and the consequences of abandoning the projects, the late President  called for  a meeting and sought the co-operation of the governors to go to their various  houses of assembly take a bill to them on the matter and have bill  passed to an Act.

He also urged them to talk  Can you talk totheir local government chairmen to support them so that when the Acts come, he will have a reference point to the legitimacy of the use of that fund. He did that and they gave him that support. And then federal government also blazed the trail by having its own contribution passed through the  National Assembly.

And then that together formed that $5.375 billion that was warehoused and called power emergency fund. It’s still the same excess crude oil account but it’s now a more legal way of doing that. The thing people might want to ask is that why didn’t they allow the process to continue while legislation was being handled?
As we are just breaking this thing down, there is a complex power structure that we still need to understand, because in Nigeria there is too much of government in everything. Is there any difference between Power Holding Company of Nigeria and Niger Delta Power Limited and then the relationship between these structures and the power ministry?

Power Holding Company of Nigeria is owned, managed and financed by the federal government of Nigeria. It’s a federal government parastatal. Power Holding Company of Nigeria is a company in reform. It was formally ECN, it became NEPA and then PHCN. The transition from NEPA to PHCN is in continuation of the reform program. Niger Delta Power Holding Company is owned by the three tiers of government who contributed to financing this project and this project is called Independent Power Project.

The two of them have their root originally from the ministry of power until it became clear that for Niger Delta Power Holding Company, because of its ownership structure, it has to be independent and different. PHCN on its own still remains a baby of the ministry of power.

Many of the projects we are doing in the Niger Delta Power Holding Company have a root from PHCN. In fact, there were many transmission projects that were transferred from PHCN to NIPP for us to complete.

Similarly, you will find that some power programs under Niger Delta Power Holding Company are called phase two of the same power projects in PHCN. Examples are Geregu, first phase of Geregu was built by PHCN using federal government facility. Omotosho phase one was built by PHCN using federal government investment. Phase two of these projects are currently being built by Niger Delta Power Holding Company.

Because Transmission Company of Nigeria (TCN) is one of the successor companies of PHCN, TCN is handling the grid system and we can -not evacuate our power without reference to that network grid system. In fact, some of our development projects are to make that TCN current infrastructure more robust and capable of taking the additional power we are expecting to push into the system. So we have that relationship.

And because TCN still belongs to the ministry of power, the relationship continues. There is no way you can have anything to do in power without that relationship. The additional relationship is that in fact, when National Integrated Power Project was formed, 90 per cent of its staff were seconded from PHCN. Some other staff were seconded from the ministry of power, others from ministry of petroleum because our operations involves gas, power, transmission and distribution.

Again when we were doing the distribution infrastructure in 2006, the PHCN successor companies in distribution were contacted to know  what their limitations are  limitations  that will make it impossible for us  to deliver additional 4,774MW to their customers and they brought in input. Out of that input are capacity of our funding, we said this is the intervention: NIPP can contribute to the distribution project of PHCN in order to make sure there is total delivery of power at the end of the day.

Up till today, there are several brilliant Nigerian engineers, accountants and  human resources people from PHCN who are still working in this place even though under a different name NDPHC. They still retain their status as PHCN staff seconded to this place. The link is very perfect.

are not able to pay the one who is going to do the engineering and construction or there is no power site because you have not paid the community compensation, the equipment arrived then you have a two and half years stop. You can imagine the consequence of that.

One of the fears critics have put in our minds is that our transmission and distribution capacity that can’t handle the generation in excess of 5,000 MW. How do you allay the fear of the people that we’ll have transmission and distribution capacity even if we get to 7000 MW?

NDPHC has about 27 lots of transmission projects. Transmission sub stations and line projects. Those 27 lots, lots mean bundles, a basket of projects. The actual number of projects is about 103 but bundled into clusters of 27 and they are all substations and line projects. They are going to increase the capacity of TCN to evacuate all the power that we are expecting and more. NIPP also has 42 EPC distribution projects and we have over 30 major equipment distribution manufacturing contracts in place and manufacturing phases are ongoing even as we speak.

For distribution, it takes shorter gestation period for delivery. For transmission, it is a little longer. For power generation, it’s much longer but we’ve started power earlier. Most of the equipment for power plants  are already in Nigeria and at site as at today. Let that allay the fears of our people but it’s not yet Uhuru because we will need to continue to invest in power as a totality of an investment profile in order to anticipate Nigeria’s development future.

All the companies that left Nigeria and are now in Ghana. The cost of that is that there is not enough power to sustainably keep them in business. They went to Ghana but they will come back when we are ready. And when they come back, they will use electricity and we will realize that the electricity we have is not enough. So we will have to continue to build on what we have.  That is the process. We will never get tired of building but the point is that when Nigerians are now happy they will willingly say please continue the investment. Maybe we will not be there at that time but other people who will be there will continue to build on the foundation that we are building now.

We know that gas is a critical factor to ensure that you deliver on these promises. How far have you gone to ensure you get the gas to fire the plants you are building?

What we have done is to engage the people in gas. We’ve had a series of meetings with them telling them what our expectations are and disabusing their minds from thinking we are blaming them. The gas people and us are now sitting together. They are taking our plans and activities. They are looking at how their program and activities can fit into our own program of delivery. And we are looking at the challenges together and where they want us to assist them and we have the resources to do so, we do so.

Where we want them to assist us and they have the capacity to do so, they are willing to do so.
The Vice President is also holding a series of meetings with them and us under the Office of the President. Every interface relationship required for these things to be realized are put on board. You will notice that the President set up the Power Action Committee. Look at the selected people on that committee, the ministers of power, finance, minister of petroleum and the CBN governor and others. They are all critical people in the interface relationship for the delivery of power and they are on the board.

Look at people who are in the Presidential Tax Force on Power under Professor Barth Nnaji. You have due process man, you have NNPC people represented and they are discussing gas. You have the ministry of power, PHCN, TCN, BPE, and FEC represented in that committee where issues that pertain to the holistic delivery of power that transcend the issue of reform are all put on the table at once and all bottlenecks are identified and quickly resolved.
The vice President is driving his own. The customs have cleared a whole ship of power equipment within a record time of less than 24 hours.

Again, the ministry of finance to look at a backlog of other power equipment that are stranded. They are going to be un-stranded and delivered to the sites. The minister of transport is going to come on board because the shipping companies are under him and these containers are being held by them for various causes of demurrage that has accumulated. We have to fashion out a way by which everybody will help Nigeria. We have to help Nigeria for her to move out of darkness into light. All hands will be on deck.

Back to gas issue,we understand the producers have entered into a long term gas supply  commitment to some international companies. How are we going to resolve this so that enough gas can get to your power plants?

Yes, we have discussed with them. They know their commitments to their foreign contractors and claim. The bottom line is that they are doing business from a place and that place needs this gas and their ability to continue in their business depends on the ability of that place to be able to continue to keep them there. It is about the will to come to terms with reality and I think they are all getting there now. All hands are on board. In fact, the gas suppliers are just telling us to come and sign the GSP, the gas supplier agreement. If you sign it now, they are confident, they will go ahead and give us the gas. It may be slow in coming but when the whole mechanism is put together, everything will become sustainable and we will continue to live like that.

9.Q-: Is there no fear within the NIPP sector that government is always talking about reforms, that maybe reforms will consume NIPP itself?
A: First of all, Nigerians must be ready to make the right sacrifices in order for the totality of the mcountry to move ahead in the right direction. I do not wish under any circumstance, that the NDPHCN, whether under me or under whoever else that comes after me, and the numerous people that will come after me will want to manage and run this asset as public asset. It has to be by private sector best practices. The reason is that government has found out, over time, that they are not good at business.

They are good at providing security, infrastructure, the enabling environment, legal framework for  people to do business the right way it should be done and bring people to book when they breach the laws. That is what government should be doing. To study the situations and looking at how they can plug loopholes by laws and to put trust and confidence into the system. For us, I do not so much concern myself about what is going to happen to NIPP because I believe nobody, among those that are the investors, will want to have NIPP or NDPHC run as a public enterprise or a ministry using public sector practices.

Rather, they must move away from public sector to private sector and allow the private sector to come in and through that direction, our board has approved, and a letter has been signed by me, BPE for a no objection to be given for a selective tender process to get in a transaction adviser that will advise Nigeria on what to do with these power stations that are coming on board. How to run them profitably for Nigeria using international templates in an orderly fashion to drive efficiency at a profitable level to ensure that the investment is not lost. And that these equipment are continually maintained in line with operational guidelines that the manufacturers themselves have put in place.

NDPHC, the way it’s being run is going to be a small company, not a bogus company. The reason is because we are going to get companies of private sector business people, experts in the arts and science of running, operating and maintaining power plant facilities to bid. Unfortunately there is a time  lag now.

Power plants are likely to be ready. They will be ready before we are ready with the financial adviser. A mechanism must be put in place not to be run by PHCN but by NIPP but some people will have to run it and they must be from private sector. They will run it for as long as we get the financial adviser in to do the holistic business profile and then come out with the solution that will be put in place. So if the process of reform consumes it for the betterment of Nigeria, so be it.

10.Q-: Recently, the House Committee on Public Accounts reportedly called you to reconcile some accounts of the NIPP and there were some rumbles that the Committee spotted some untidiness or un-reconciled figures. What really  happened  between the NIPP and the Public Accounts Committee?

A: Let me explain this way.  I was not around when the House Committee on Public Accounts  requested  us to submit our accounts to them but I got to know about it. I was sick, I was not around when the papers were compiled and sent to the committee but I arrived early enough to be the one to present it to the Committee and you’ll recall that we made a public statement before that time  that armed robbers came to our office  and nearly killed four of our security men.  Probably they were looking for money and they destroyed a lot of things.

One of the things they took away from us was our server. I don’t know what they were going to use that for. And the server contained our accounting files. What  the House was  asking us to provide was accounting details and we were just about re-building our account details which my people  has to build  up manually.

When I was presenting the submission to the House committee, there were actually some areas of error and discrepancies. I acknowledged there were errors. I am a human being and the people who prepared them were human beings and they are my staff. I have deepest respect for my staff, they are hard working.  Anybody who can work in the environment where we are working, especially in the last four years, will know that these people are  committed.

But unfortunately there were errors. And the errors for instance, if a contract is said to be N20 and on the payment side, you see N30, anybody will ask questions. The reason for the error is that the original paper for the contract was what they put. The variation on that contract was missing. They didn’t add it up when they were doing the presentation. A contract was supposed to be N40 but the base contract itself is N10 or N15.  So when they compiled the payment record, it was higher than the base contract and they said that  it was fraudulent. I said it was not fraudulent, it’s just an omission on the part of the human beings who were compiling the data manually and so there were errors and I acknowledged there were errors.

I don’t want to bother giving them that excuses. It’s my name, yes, managing director, chief executive, but I wasn’t the one who signed it. It’s of no relevance because the person who signed it signed for me. So I take  responsibility for it.  These things have  since been corrected and the accounting system itself is being put right. I have consultants working on them, updating the record and everything is being programmed into the computer system again and we are having backup so that we don’t lose information anymore.

I don’t want to blame the House for that misunderstanding. I think the chairman understood me when I explained but I was in shock myself when I saw it in some papers that we did something fishy. That was one of the issues. The second issue was about the Letters of Credit and the percentages of completion of certain projects vis-à-vis what they said was the amount of money that has been paid already.  I tried to explain just like I did earlier, that there is difference between funding of a project and payment for a project.

Funding of a project through LC is not the same thing as payment for the project. If you go to my account you will find out that it has been debited to the full value of the contract. To me I have funded the contract. And because the contractor gave the full detail as to which bank to credit the LC for, I have funded him. So in my book it is reflected that I have paid for that project. But I know that my funding is securitized. The security in that funding mechanism is that first in the places where we pay advance payment to contractors, which is like the mobilization fee, if you like.

Under the laws of Nigeria, at one time 25 per cent, currently 15 per cent; we have a back up of advance payment guarantee from first class Nigerian banks.  Some of the banks were even foreign banks that gave us equivalent value for the amount of money they are giving to the contractor.

Where we pay LC, the LC is domiciled in the bank that CBN makes enquiry about before they send such money to them. They call them status report. They make enquiry about the contractor, bank, ensure the money is safe; and they will not leave that place until we tell them that it is right for them to release the money.

There is still that area of discordant note of lack of understanding. The advance payment we made, even though it is collateralized, every subsequent invoice of, from the contractor on the project, based on work that has been done, we deduct a percentage of that to account for that 25 per cent or 15 per cent that we paid him earlier. So after a while, the entire 25 per cent that we gave is like a loan to the person.

And he collateralized that loan with the advance payment guarantee from the bank. If he fails, we write to the bank and call off that money and the bank pays us the money. That is the implication of that. Really there is no loss in the whole thing but there was that misunderstanding and it takes the relevant people in the Committee to ask the CBN about the LC being raised if it is true or not.

Auditors do that. When they come to your office and you give them information, if there is information that can be supported with a third party input  they go to such body and ask. Incidentally, the CBN is our banker. All they need to do is write the CBN. The status of those LCs as at today is kept by CBN.

If we have $20 as LC, CBN knows how much of it is still standing unutilized. All they need is ask that question but they don’t. Again there was an issue that we didn’t provide enough information to them. The reason we didn’t provide enough information is that we provided them the information that they asked for. They gave us a template. There was a particular manner they wanted us to fill in the information and it was filled that way.

I think the  members of the House Committee are  very serious people who have a passion for accountability for Nigeria. I think they didn’t mean any harm. I think someone who was present at the meeting it could  be a press man, a liaison officer or something released information that was still being processed.

I don’t think the chairman of that committee will be happy with what came out from that, especially when they gave us the chance to go back and readdress those issues  that bothers on errors and come back to them. The good thing about it was that they didn’t even say come back next week. They said go back and do your homework very well. We have internal auditors in our system here, chartered accountants who were making sure that each transaction is properly captured. At the end of the day, we will put it on the web and Nigerians can have access to find out about our projects. It is no big deal. The big deal now is to face the project and realize them.

11.Q-: Is NIPP so conservative or are they working on a blueprint that they are not looking at what other countries are looking at like when you go to some developed countries, they depend on so many sources of power supply like solar panels and wind. Why are we not looking at those diverse sources?

A: NIPP is a fast track intervention programme. I don’t want to call it project again, I want to call it programme. To look at a fast track programme, you’ll look back to issues like your budget, the technology and the sustainability of that technology. The fact that it can deliver the power you are expecting. And on a commercial level, not just small power. If you want small power you can use wind, it can be expensive but it will give you small power. But Nigeria has a big gap of power dislocation which we have to fill in quickly.

If you want bio mass or solar panel power, they are small power. And the technology is still being developed to make it commercially viable for public use. It’s an expensive thing to pull panels on this rooftop to harness energy from the sun and store it enough to power our equipment. The air conditioners will drain that power once. The technology is not yet so much refined. Going forward, it is a wrong thing for any nation that has the choice of technologies to depend on one technology. Sudan has a water source and so they went for hydro.

You can’t blame them because  that is what they have. Saudi Arabia has a lot of sunshine and oil, so they have a lot of solar panels and gas turbines. Nigeria has a lot of coal and some water like Mambila, Zungeru but like I said, a typical hydro power plant takes seven to eight years to build. That is if you don’t have the kind of dislocation we had in NIPP. On a consistent level, you can complete it in seven years. If you have dislocations, you still be on it for 10 or 15 years. You’ll recall that we started Mambilla at the same time that Sudan started their Sudan Hydro Power Plant. The same Lamiya International who is our design consultant is the same people who are design consultants for Mambila Power Project. They are the same people who are design consultant for Sudan.

Here in Nigeria, we could not put our house in order. Our Mambilla Power Plant is still at the soil test level. Sudan has delivered their own and commissioned it. That is the picture.

That is 2,600MW power plant, one single power plant. They delivered it. So when you remove rancor, you can do any project. If you don’t remove all these sentimentality that keeps on putting Nigeria asunder, we will never achieve anything. So, for security reasons, for the advantages of diversification and for ensuring that we use our resources efficiently and effectively, it is necessary that we use various technologies for getting our mix of power right. I suggest that we tap unto hydro and coal resources; and continue to use gas because we have gas but we should not depend on one because if anything goes wrong with that one, we will be in trouble.