Eskom, South Africa’s state power utility [think of NEPA or PHCN in Nigeria], is coming back to life: “Eskom has recently achieved a notable improvement by maintaining operations without loadshedding for an extended period.” BBC Newshour last week chronicled the magical turnaround of this public utility which provides electricity to South Africans. It was a beauty because South Africa did not follow the bandwagon thinking that only private companies could deliver better services to the citizens.
Yes, you have a porous border, and people are selling your subsidized petrol in neigbouring countries, but instead of firing the leadership of the customs, and replacing them with competent people, you blame the subsidized petrol which is catalytic to the functioning of the economy.
You argue that NEPA or PHCN, Nigeria’s old electricity utility, was not competent because the public sector cannot run anything. Yes, the argument goes, we have to privatize NEPA so that electricity will magically “show” up in Nigeria. You privatized and the situation has further deteriorated because those private companies have not done what must be done.
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In China, in Russia and many places in Europe, the GOVERNMENT is still at the heart of whatever they do. But in Nigeria, people think the problem is the public sector instead of focusing on corruption and lack of professionalism. Simply, when we argue that petrol subsidy is bad, we ought to be saying that it is the corruption that is in petrol subsidy that is bad, because every important country subsidizes energy.
I have confidence in the power of the public sector because the public sector runs the MILITARY. That means, nations believe that the public can handle one of the most challenging assignments in nations – operating and managing the vectors of law enforcement, national security, etc. If the public can do that, why should the provision of electricity be hard?
Good People: go to South Africa and check how they have turned Eskom around, positing that the public sector can still deliver value. That happened without selling the assets of the commonwealth to a few connected people who then hold them and do nothing that advances the citizens.
From education to healthcare, electricity provision to clean water provision, and more, the Nigerian state should not fall on the illusion that private players can suddenly solve all the problems, if they are handed these assets. All we need is to professionalize our government institutions and weed out corruption.
I have confidence in the power of the public sector because the public sector runs the MILITARY. If the public can do that, why not electricity? Nigeria should STOP selling the assets of the commonwealth to few connected people; rather, we must professionalize our government institutions and weed out corruption.
As we do that, we must OPEN the spaces for independent private players to participate, but mindlessly withdrawing and relinquishing national assets, as we did with electricity, is immoral. South Africa replaced Eskom leaders, retrained workers, pushed new performance metrics, etc, and now they have LIGHT! Nigeria must learn from it.
(If Nigeria had sold Nitel to MTN, that MTN would have failed because it would have been sold to incompetent people. In other words, when you sell national assets to “private players”, the outcome is always poor in Nigeria. But when you allow real private players to come, you have a better outcome because those players will get things done.)
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Your narrative suggests that Nigeria is overflowing with competent people and corruption is the problem, and by ‘professionalizing’ things, we would get the promised land. This in itself is an illusion. Does Nigeria really have enough competent people to run its economy excellently? The answer is no. Forget speculations, whenever we blame our failings on corruption, we are being irresponsible. One of the biggest problems here is overrating our actual capacities and capabilities.
The only way to prove that you can do something is by doing it. Here, we have proven over and over again that we are incompetent and irresponsible, yet we keep yammering as though we are so great but chose to be mediocre. How can you say that you have something but cannot show it, and yet, you still want to be taken seriously? This is ridiculous.
The military you cited as example is also failing, so it’s not a great example for showing that public sector can run anything in Nigeria. Our case is such that we are abysmal in both public and private sectors, so let’s stop this delusion that we are good at something, no, we are not.
South Africa might function, because they still have a White population, it’s the Black Man that needs to prove something.
I respectively disagree with you on this matter. To say that Nigeria do not have competent people to run its affairs is grossly incorrect. The main problem is that competent and visionary leaders are being forced out of our electoral process giving way to greedy and clueless lowlife to run the affairs of our nation. The selfish rulers proceed to recruit all manners of thieves and incompetent hands to run the ministries and parastatals of government. So what do we expect when the worst of us are the ones running the affairs of our country and making decisions that affects several generations.