Monday 31 December 2012

Barth Nnaji and the tragedy of government in nigeria


Sidenote: Barth Nnaji and the tragedy of government in Nigeria


*Nnaji is a YNaija Person of the Year 2012 finalist
by Stanley Azuakola
On August 27, Barth Nnaji hit the road.
In this season of lists, perhaps we should just put it out there that the question of whether he was fired or resigned as power minister ranks among the top 10 unknowns of 2012.
But here’s one thing that became clear soon after his departure: If most Nigerians had been consulted on which federal ministers should be dropped, Nnaji’s name would certainly not have made the list, at least not the very week after Nigeria achieved record power generation of 4,447MW.
[Read 'YNaija Editorial: Aliko Dangote is YNaija Person of the Year 2012… Let’s tell you why' HERE]
It’s a Nigerian paradox – more so, because it was predictable.
When Nnaji promised that by today, the last day in 2012, Nigeria would be generating 5,400MW, then 9000MW by 2013 and 18,000MW by 2015, this writer had predicted on YNaija that “considering [how] ministerial appointments in Nigeria have short life spans (unless you are Ojo Maduekwe or Hassan Lawal,) it’s unlikely that Prof. Nnaji would be around to implement all of these.”
Two months later, Nnaji was gone.
Make no mistake, the ex-minister was not a radical; not by any stretch – but he was different.
For one, he wasn’t vague. “We said that by October of this year, privatisation will be concluded, and it is a certainty,”he said in a June interview. By October, it was concluded. Promise delivered. He had left by then, but the breakthrough was the result of structures put in place by him.
An obvious peg suited for his hole, international accomplishments undisputable, under his watch there was a steady increase in the number of hours consumers were supplied with electricity. And let’s be frank, a man much hated by the corrupt electricity union must have been doing something right.
But the technocrats’ cross is not easy to bear, especially if one desires to live above board.
When Nnaji accepted to serve as minister in a sector in which he had considerable interests, how much sacrifice was expected of him? How much did he reckon?
He resigned as director in all companies in which he had interests and put his shares in those companies on blind trust. But Nigerians expected more. They expected that the two companies in which Nnaji had interests should not have participated in the privatisation process, a once-in-a-blue-moon opportunity.
Inevitably, the thinking was that Nnaji’s previous association with the companies (one belongs to him, the other had been a contractor for his firm) gave them an unfair advantage and should have bared them from seeking to expand their portfolios while he was minister. Nnaji’s explanation that he’d opted out of the selection process to avoid a conflict of interest was not enough.
Thus was he caught between Scylla and Charybdis: banned by law and morality from touching public funds and banned by public perception from competing and making profit in his business, no matter that he was, as he put it, no longer involved day-to-day.
Nnaji had to make a choice. He chose to go. That’s if you believe him.
There are other scenarios. Perhaps Nnaji had simply lost out in the power play between him and his successor as chairman of the presidential task force on power, Reynolds Bekinbo Dagogo-Jack. Perhaps the power cabal had finally gotten something on their foe. It could also bethat he’d sought to corruptly influence things in favour of the two firms.
Mostly likely, it was all of the above, though Nigerians were clearly willing to buy the Nnaji official rendition that he “had to voluntarily resign to retain my integrity, which has in recent days come under scurrilous attacks by powerful vested interests that were hell-bent on besmirching the integrity and reputation that I’ve painstakingly built over the years.”
Not one to be held back, the maverick professor has returned to his firm, Geometric power, which – if everything goes according to plan – should begin supplying 188MW of power from its Aba plant in two months time.
And the ministry he left behind? There is still no substantive minister in place. The man pulling the strings is Reynolds Dagogo-Jack, the new chairman of the Prbesidential Task Force on Power, who in December bragged that Nigeria is now generating “its highest power yet at 4349MW.”
Of course, if Dagogo-Jack had done a simple Internet search he might have noticed that this so-called record power generation is almost 100MW less than the 4447MW we were reportedly generating in the final days of Nnaji’s tenure.
This simple announcement was ample notification that Nigeria was almost certainly back to pre-Nnaji darkness. And it might take a while before we find the switch again.

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