by Frank NduNdibe

It is heartwarming that Ohaneze Ndigbo, as the great guardian of Igbo interests and values, not only criticised the desperation to hand over Enugu Disco to a grossly ill-prepared company but courageously asked that the reserve bidder, namely, Eastern Electric, be called upon to make the payment immediately. 

With the exception of Okey Ikechukwu and the infinitesimal coterie of politically exposed persons whose private interests he articulated in his column of September10, there is no Nigerian of Igbo extraction who is not relieved at the public statement of Ohaneze Ndigbo which was published in THISDAY of last Wednesday and The Sun the following day, on the awful attempt by one or two persons in government to sell the Enugu Electricity Distribution Company (EEDC) to a consortium which is evidently ill prepared for serious business like power distribution, which is utterly different from the execution of government contracts in Nigeria that can be carried out arbitrarily. Ohaneze has profound reasons to be apprehensive.

The public face of Interstate Electrics, the preferred bidder for the Enugu Disco, is Sir Emeka Offor. He made newspaper headlines in the late 1990s when his Chrome company became the first indigenous African company to be awarded a contract to carry out a turn around maintenance (TAM) of an oil refinery. He was given a whopping $98 million by the Sani Abacha regime to perform TAM at the 150,000 barrel per day Port Harcourt Refinery and Petrochemical Company. Whether the refinery has to this day yet to recover from the turn around maintenance is a matter for every Nigerian to decide.
All the other 14 preferred bidders for the Power Holding Company of Nigeria (PHCN) assets being privatised paid their outstanding 75% of the bid prices by Wednesday, August 21, 2013; the bidders for the Shiroro plant and the Sapele Power station had paid huge amounts. But it is the tough luck of the South-east and their neighbours in the South-south that Interstate, which won the bid to be the sole supplier of electricity to their areas, was the only company that failed to pay even a dollar at the expiration of the payment deadline. Is this an indication of seriousness?
The South-east has suffered the worst power infrastructure in the country, according to a former Minister of Power, Dr Olusegun Agagu, who later became the Ondo State governor. Yet, the South-east is often called the Japan of West Africa because of the people’s ingenuity in science and technology, as well as manufacturing.  The technological achievements of the Biafrans during the Nigerian civil war of 1967-70 are recognised worldwide by such great thinkers as the late Professor Stanley Diamond whose “The Biafran Possibility” will remain an epic work from generation to generation. The recent industrial examples of Nnewi and Aba are, of course, well noted. Unfortunately, the great promise of Nnewi and Aba, among other places, is dying. Take the examples of the death of Onwuka Hi-Tek and Star Paper Mill in Aba founded by the great Chief Nnana Kalu.

The major cause of these deaths was with catastrophic consequences? The number one cause is  well known: poor electricity. Ohaneze would be committing sacrilege if it had not risen to the challenge of the moment by calling national attention to the sleight of hand deal which some people in government want to carry out by handing over the Enugu Electricity Distribution Company to a firm yet to demonstrate sufficient high purpose.

Ikechukwu tried to create the impression that Interstate Electrics received approval from the Bureau of Public enterprises (BPE) for an extension of the payment deadline. This is wrong because no such extension was given. I am attaching to this short article correspondence between the BPE and Interstate on this matter, and I would like the reader to take note of the dates of the correspondence.

It must be pointed out that an extension could be granted only before the expiration of the payment deadline. The parties must agree on the conditions like the occurrence of an act of God like an earthquake, developments which lawyers like to refer to as force majeure. By the way, could such an extension be granted to Interstate without the same treatment given to other preferred bidders? In law, let us remember, everyone is equal; there is nothing like some animals being more equal than others, as George Orwell put it. The rule of law must guide all business transactions in Nigeria if our beloved nation would not be seen by the international community as a banana republic.
Ijeoma Nwogwugwu, the brilliant and fearless editor of THISDAY has argued eloquently in her column of August that Interstate failed the commercial and technical requirements for the bidding round but was shepherded by Vice-President Namadi Sambo and other friends of Sir Emeka Offor in government. Nigeria must be the only country in the world where officials of the privatising agency and even the regulatory agency could brazenly change the bid documents of a firm in broad daylight in order to change the place of a decimal in the most critical figure. Still, Ikechukwu saw nothing wrong in this act. No wonder, Nigeria is in such a moral, social and economic mess. Intellectuals and columnists love to dance around men of money and power, as the great economist, Dr Pius Okigbo, would say. Nigeria’s greatest tragedy, reasoned Okigbo, is the “phenomenon of educated people succumbing to the superior knowledge of ignorant people”.
It is heartwarming that Ohaneze Ndigbo, as the great guardian of Igbo interests and values, not only criticised the desperation to hand over Enugu Disco to a grossly ill-prepared company but courageously asked that the reserve bidder, namely, Eastern Electric, be called upon to make the payment immediately.  This consortium consists of the five South-east state governments, Aba Power Project, Diamond Bank founding chairman Pascal Dozie, former Power Minister Bart Nnaji who is a world class scientist and engineer, and Geometric Power Ltd.

This consortium has pledged to pay the $126 million Enugu Disco reserve bid price. To be the sure, the Igbo are discerning enough to recognise genuine achievers among them who are committed to the common good. To give the Enugu Electricity Distribution Company to an unserious firm amounts to an eternal economic strangulation of the South-east and neighbouring communities in the South-south.

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Read this article in the Thisday Newspapers

Op-ed pieces and contributions are the opinions of the writers only and do not represent the opinions of Y!/YNaija.