Femi Ogun, President/Chief Executive Officer, PowerHouse Energy Africa
Femi
Ogun is the President/Chief Executive Officer, PowerHouse Energy
Africa, an affiliate of PowerHouse Energy America. In this interview
with STANLEY OPARA, he speaks about the power industry and the need to explore alternative sources of energy, among other issues
Going to two
years after the power generation and distribution companies were
privatised by the Federal Government, little or nothing has changed as
far as the power sector is concerned. Does this worry you?
First and foremost, to say that the
companies were sold is not truly the case because there is no sincerity
of purpose. When you sell a company, such a company does not come back
for a bailout. As an investor, if you buy something, you should invest
your money and make that thing work. The people who bought these
companies now say they didn’t expect what they bought. Nobody buys what
he or she never inspected. Billions of dollars were spent buying these
companies, and the buyers should have inspected them before paying.
Personally,
I wouldn’t have sold the Power Holding Company of Nigeria if I was
making that decision. The way to have handled the situation was to leave
PHCN alone and license everybody who wants to generate power. They
should be licensed for whatever power they want to generate. They are
meant to pay their licensing fees to generate power and how they
generate power for their customers would be strictly their concern. In
the beginning, there would be a lot of companies, which could be in
thousands; but the market will later sort itself out. The strong will
survive and the weak will die, and the generality of Nigerians will be
the beneficiaries. The telecommunications industry is a perfect example
of this model. The government was trying to sell Nigerian
Telecommunications Limited and the workers fought against it. They
decided to leave that alone and license private companies. A lot of
companies came, but now, we have five or six left. In the beginning, the
price of telephony was very high, and a SIM card was sold for as high
as N20,000. But now, you can get a SIM card for as low as N100.
Everything is going down because the industry is wide open and
competition is forcing prices to come down. The same thing would have
happened in the power industry.
The past government took the
decision to privatise the power industry. Now, we have a new government,
do you see the process being reversed by the Muhammadu Buhari-led
government?
Well, anything can be reversed. Some days
ago, the Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission said it was going
to reverse the licences of companies that were not putting their
licences to use. I think that might not be a bad idea. If they were
given two to three years to do something, and no progress has been made,
I think the licences should be revoked so that people who actually do
something could be allowed to do so.
But my focus is actually on the
generation and distribution companies that are already operating. Do you
think this government can go ahead to reverse the privatisation process
owing to the current state of the industry?
I don’t think that will be a good idea.
Government could strengthen them to make them better. The distribution
companies, for instance, are faced with revenue collection challenges
from customers. The law is there already stressing that if power is
used, it should be paid for. There was a recent complaint by one of the
companies that Federal Airports Authority of Nigeria was owing it huge
sums for power consumed. This is a government agency, and there is no
justification not to pay for used power. The generation company should
be able to disconnect their power, take them to court and make them pay.
This is the problem; we should make people pay. It does not matter who
you are – whether government or private entities; let everybody be
treated on a pay-as-you-go basis. Full deployment of prepaid meters is
needed here since that is the only way you can force people to pay. In
Nigeria, people want to use power and don’t pay for it. People take
loans and use services, and thereafter, refuse to pay. There is no free
lunch anywhere, even in Freetown.
Gas supply and infrastructural
deficiency have continued to pose challenges to the industry. What, in
your view, is the way out of these problems?
For the gas challenge, I think government
should build enough gas pipelines that will convey natural gas from
areas of availability to areas of need. I think each state of the
federation should have two or three areas where a major pipeline enters
the state so that power can be generated from there. The government and
the private sector have to work together. You don’t expect the private
sector to do it alone. The government has to help because in Nigeria
there are issues of Right of Way, which should be addressed by
government.
We need to understand that natural gas is
just one source of energy. There are other alternative energy sources
the government should look at. For instance, our company produces its
own gas at the place of need using just waste and also generate power
from it off-grid. The country can also look at solar, wind and other
sources. We should explore all sorts of options. In Europe, America and
other continents, all available sources of energy are explored.
Countries are moving away from large
power plants. Instead of investing so much in gigantic power plants,
Nigeria should act like other countries where so much is being invested
in modular power plants. With the cases of terrorism and other vices
rising, it has become increasingly risky to spend so much on building
gigantic power plants. I want us to picture a case where a gigantic
power plant is blown up by terrorists.
If you build modular power plants all
over the place, it is impossible for anybody to blow up all of them at
the same time. If there is a problem with one of the plants, the effect
won’t be very significant. The truth is that for a nation, no one
solution can solve the problem.
As a Nigerian that has been
exposed to practices in the developed economies, what alternative energy
mix will you prescribe for the nation?
When I came back to Nigeria, I discovered
that thrash (waste) is on the rise. Officially, Lagos, for instance
collects over 10,000 metric tonnes of waste per day as reported by Lagos
State Waste Management Authority. This is aside the illegal dumpsites.
That is a lot of waste. My company and some other companies can generate
power with the waste. All we need is an enabling environment to allow
us to bring about the change. There are so many technologies currently
in use globally to generate power using waste. Let everybody be allowed
to bring their technologies so that there will be competition, which
will lead to the emergence of the best player(s). The ones that cannot
survive will go somewhere else. With this, the consumer will be better
for it. If this is allowed to thrive, in the beginning it may not be
rosy, but in the long run, market forces would sort things out and the
consumers will then be paying competitive prices for good electricity
services.
Aside waste, what other options are open to us as a country?
I know for a fact that Enugu and Anambra
states have a huge reserve of coal. In the United States and China, the
largest way to produce power is through coal. Though it is dirty, they
are still using it. So, what is our excuse? The resource is just in the
ground lying fallow. This is one resource that can give us a lot of
power. Why are we not levering it? Solar is also there, as well as other
options.
With the quantum of waste
generated in a state like Lagos for instance, how many megawatts do you
think we can rake in as a country leveraging waste?
When we were talking to LAWMA about doing
this, we were looking at using two major waste items – used tyres and
plastics. What LAWMA agreed to give us was 250MT per day. If you look at
that, we could be able to generate over 300MW from the waste we have.
That is from just what they gave us; and they have more than that. If we
have like 10 companies in whole doing this, that means over 3,000MW.
Allowing more companies to come remains one major way we can address our
power challenges.
If this is replicated in all states of
the country, we could easily do 10,000MW, and it could be on-grid or
off-grid. The disadvantage of putting what is generated on-grid is that
there could be some bleed-off or energy loss. So, it is always
beneficial to do off-grid.
On the choices of waste, you talked about rubber and plastics. What about other categories of waste?
You can use all sorts of waste. In
Germany for instance, sewage is used heavily. Water is taken off the
sewage and it is made solid. The solid waste is now processed to
generate power. We can also do that in Nigeria. In Nigeria and other
African countries, plastics and rubber are heavily used for the purpose
because they are the highest waste generated.
by Stanley Opar
No comments:
Post a Comment