Nigeria’s former minister of power, Senator Liyel Imoke revisited the 2009 power probe by the House of Representatives, stating that the former Olusegun Obasanjo administration never spent $16 billion on the power sector as alleged.
Imoke, also the Chairman of the Power Sector Technical Board under the Obasanjo administration, stated the allegations and the attendant probe unduly delayed the implementation of the power sector reforms.
Nigeria’s House of Representatives, the lower chamber of parliament in 2009 opened a probe into allegations that former President Olusegun Obasanjo spent $16 billion on the power sector, with no tangible result.
The lawmakers leveraged Nigeria’s long history of severe power shortages caused by insufficient capacity and problems with transmission lines.
Former President Olusegun Obasanjo had in the bid to address the country’s intractable power crisis, committed about $16 billion to the sector, during his eight-year rule. The administration had targeted the goal of 10,000 megawatts of electricity by the end of its tenure in 2007. However, power generation remained stagnant.
The House of Representatives Committee on Power and Steel led by Ndudi Elumelu in a public investigative hearing spanning four weeks tried to investigate how the money was spent.
“Having spent one naira or one dollar, we have not been able to add even one megawatt to the existing one,” Elemelu said then. “Rather, we are losing the existing one, day in, day out. We have made it clear to everybody, irrespective of your position, that we will call whoever, when necessary, to come and explain how the money was expended. He [former president Olusegun Obasanjo] was in charge. We will invite him, if necessary.”
Imoke, who later became the governor of Cross River State, spoke last Thursday at the 8th Annual Conference of the Guild of Corporate Online Publishers (GOCOP), themed: “Nigeria: Tackling insecurity, power deficit, and transitioning to digital economy.”
According to him: “The power sector probe took about two years. The delay led to huge cost overruns; doubling the costs of various contracts awarded during my tenure. Several of these projects were delayed in completion. As we speak, several IPP projects are still ongoing.”
He said that at the end of the probe, they found out that there was no missing $16bn, but lamented that the alleged expenditure of the phantom $16b was a political tool to criticise “those of us in government.”
Imoke explained that the execution of so many programmes faced various challenges because the National Electric Power Authority (NEPA), as it then was, was a monopoly, fingered inadequate information as the trigger for the allegation, pointing out that, for instance, on his watch as Minister of Power, the actual spending was between $2b and $3b, much of which went to the original electric manufacturer.
