If President Muhammadu Buhari succeeds in his current move to intervene in the electricity power crisis in Nigeria, he would have scored a master stroke; addressing a most fundamental national yearning.

He will only then gladly escape the probe of history that ends with that question he once threw at his predecessor, Olusegun Obasanjo, "You spent $16bn on power projects, where is the power?" And Obasanjo is yet to answer that question two years after it was asked. We must not in the future hear the same question asked of President Buhari, who with German help, is set to spend $E3.11bn and N1.15tn to resolve the endemic crisis in electricity power supply in the country. With focus, integrity and accountability, this can not elude Nigeria.

That is why I find the trouble with having to fire the Managing Director of the the Transmission Company of Nigeria (TCN), Engr. Usman Mohammed, disturbing. The Presidential Power Initiative will be jeopardised if it takes off on such wet and slippery ground, as a power tussle between the power minister and the chief executive of a parastatal, especially if found erring.

It is obvious that changes at TCN were approved by President Muhammadu Buhari. It should be considered over and done with and we should move to the next level of appointing a board for TCN, which should be quickly constituted to consider and appoint a substantive managing director.

In the running crisis over the sacking of the erstwhile chief executive of TCN, an old anomaly that bedevilled all past efforts to resolve power issues has again reared its ugly head - the tenuous nature of management. Unions are being influenced to politicise a simple management decision, and in so doing, hold the whole country to ransom at a very critical time.

Between the offices of the Minister for Power, Finance, and the Presidency through the office of the Secretary to the Government of the Federation (SGF), there continues to be disquiet as if there is no conclusion yet on the matter. It should dawn on us that time has began to run out on the agreements with the German consortium on the power initiative, and more crucially, also for President Buhari who desires to deliver within his tenure. There should be no ambiguity.

The Minister of Power, Engr. Sale Mamman, tired of a running battle with Usman Mohammed as MD of TCN, was left no choice but to secure President Buhari's approval to sack Usman. TCN is a fundamental component in the power reforms, that of necessity must be aligned if the Siemens plan is to succeed. The snag obviously is that while the presidency was securing the German funding, the TCN had gone on to secure funding from other sources, namely the African Development Bank (AfDB), with the hope to apply it towards grid integrity. We hence have a clash of interests. Fortunately in all wisdom, President Buhari has determined to save the "Titanic" from sinking over the small AfDB "iceberg" loan. With that went Usman Mohammed who was tenacious in his persistence to stand aloof on the alignment of the TCN to the presidential initiative. Usman incidentally was further undermined by the fact that while generation had climbed hovering around 5000MW, the TCN, "marred by ineffective maintenance and poor system management which contributes to partial and total system collapses", was unable to evacuate and deliver the generated power to distributors. The losses owing to this "severe infrastructural misalignment" total about N1bn daily, according to Sale Mamman.

The idea that the AfDB facility is tied to an individual manager is preposterous. No sole individual should be such a linchpin as to be held more accountable for a loan facility than the government itself. In any case, the AfDB has welcomed the constitution of the new management for TCN. What remains to be determined is whether the loan facility should be thrown into the German carte if needed. Surely there is more that can be found to do with funds.

The crude concept of electric power supply in Nigeria is that an entity generates the electricity and delivers to another entity to transmit it nationwide; to Distribution Companies (DisCos) who then sell to consumers. I do not know any country that succeeded with this type of contraption. Viewed as a solution, this is what became of the over 20-year-old effort to solve the simple fact that the old National Electric Power Authority (NEPA) which became the Power Holding Company of Nigeria (PHCN) was seen as amorphous and consequently inefficient and the solution was the intricate act of unbundling of the process into splinter units. We created separate entities for power generation, transmission, distribution and consumption. This inadvertently is the camel delivered to Nigeria for the horse that NEPA and later PHCN was. I doubt that we have been better off. In trying to resolve the inefficiency that we thought was owed to amorphous size, we appear to have splintered the old power entity only to multiply the challenges. Nigeria has continued to suffer the consequences of "incorporating too many conflicting opinions into a single project through compromise"; so to say. Without eliminating this, we just might fail despite the presidential initiative. God forbid!

In trying to resolve the persistent Nigerian energy crisis, President Buhari had asserted, "Our goal is simply to deliver electricity to Nigerian businesses and homes... Our intention is to ensure that our cooperation is structured under a government-to-government framework. No middlemen will be involved so that we can achieve value for money for Nigerians."

The highlights of the initiative are impressed upon a first phase, to resolve 2,000MW of Transmission and Distribution Constraints, taking operational capacity of the grid to 7,000MW, and a second phase, to increase operational Grid Capacity by an additional 4,000MW to 11,000MW. The final third phase, is to achieve total operational Generation and Grid Capacity of 25,000MW subsequently, by 2021. This clear mission statement is novel and should make Nigerians happy that electricity issues over which so much has been spent and so many good and competent patriots destroyed is finally being resolved.

For once, let us get it right. Losses of N1bn a day owing to the inability of TCN to evacuate generated power should be unacceptable. Without this evacuation, Distribution Companies (DisCos) nationwide remain hamstrung with no electricity to distribute, undermining development, leaving Nigerians desperately frustrated without electricity.

More importantly, we must resolve the transmission issues that constitute the main challenge to efficient supply of electricity.

Copyright Daily Trust. Distributed by AllAfrica Global Media (allAfrica.com)., source News Service English