When Professor Barth Nnaji granted me an interview in 2013 or thereabout, I did not know that he had outstanding issues on the Geometric power plant in Osisioma, Aba. I told him that the project was taking too long and it ought to have commenced operation. He probably knew that I was ignorant of the issues he had on the project. He went into a long lecture on technical issues that needed to be resolved and test runs in batches and all that. I told him that the people were impatient with those long tests. He admitted that he understood their anxiety and promised that the power station would come into operation soon. But the project took another 12 years to come to fruition. Professor Nnaji was passionate about the project. He had worked as the youngest Minister in Nigeria, in 1993 but did not stay up to a year. But President Goodluck Jonathan brought him back in 2011-2013. When he left office he became an entrepreneur and pitched his tent in the power sector. His firm made a bid to buy the Enugu Disco, including the Aba ring-fenced area, where the power plant is now located. But the bid ran into murky waters when Chief Emeka Ofor’s consortium petitioned the bid on the ground of error.
The presidency empaneled a special committee chaired by the Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Power to review the process. After the review the committee agreed that Chief Emeka Offor ought to have won the bid. Chief Emeka Offor was then declared winner. The Bureau of Public Enterprise(BPE) wrote to the National Electricity Regulation Council to cut off the Aba ring-fenced area from the Enugu Disco and reevaluate it for Barth Nnaji to purchase. The commission refused because it was against due process.
That was how Emeka Offor , who was said to have had the ears of many powerful people in the government, held down the project on purely business grounds. Some top brass, whose names would serve no useful purpose, were said to have taken sides with Offor. The matter has been resolved after Geometric looked for millions of dollars to pay for the fenced area. That process delayed and heightened the cost.
The fact remains that Professor Nnaji hung in there. He did not give up or despair. He had a lion heart as they say of people who took risks and dared where others dodged. It was perhaps providential that Governor Alex Otti, who was CEO of the bank that provided initial financing for the project, is the Abia Helmsman when it became ready for use. The pioneering role of the fomer Governor Orji Uzor Kalu regime should also be acknowledged.
Giving a background to the delay in the project, Otti, a former bank chief, said sometimes in 2010, the founder of Geometrics Power Limited and ex-Minister for Science and Technology, Bart Nnaji approached him as an Executive Director of First Bank to appeal that the former bank that was funding the project had stopped it mid-way owing to the global economic crisis.
He said, “We processed an $85m facility for him (Nnaji) but unfortunately, he couldn’t draw down on that facility because the board of the bank felt that because I was proceeding to Diamond Bank as CEO, it won’t make any sense to allow the country to withdraw the facility when the person that was going to manage it was not there.
“I headed to Diamond Bank which actually was the bank that was initially funding the project. On getting to Diamond Bank, we restructured the facility and saw it to completion by October 2014, the time I left Diamond Bank.
“But a lot of things happened thereafter that made it impossible for the project to take off. There was the unfortunate sale and resale of the Aba Invest Island and that took a life of its own.
From the brink the of despair the project has acquired a life of its own and has emerged as the first Independent Power Plant in the country. Its now for the creative power of Aba people to be unleashed on the nation. Its world class shoe makers, bag makers, tailors and other manufacturers would now stand out and be counted in the comity of manufacturers. When Aba is described as the Taiwan of Nigeria it is an expression of accolade to put on record the productivity of the people. The Nigerian Army was once said to have commissioned shoe makers in Aba to produce booths for the military much the same was Innoson Motors was asked to produce vehicles for the army.
Aba, like Nnewi, has very productive private industries hampered by infrastructure. Roads are riddled with potholes although Governor Oti is doing his best to continue from where his predecessors stopped, electricity, like in other parts of the nation was more unavailable that available. Importation became cheaper than manufacturing thus increasing the pressure on demand for foreign currency, especially dollar which has become the price denominator for virtually every good in the country, even farm produce.
Factors are emerging to empower Aba to mount up as the Taiwan of Nigeria, complementing such places as Nnewi and others. Every State should have its own version of Aba . It would matter of time before tailor in Aba would stop importing their own products into the country given that they would take their suits abroad, label them with foreign brands and “import’ them into Nigeria because the people have been conditioned to place inferior values on what they produce. Availability of power and other infrastructure may drive down price of production, all things being equal. They manufacturers would see the folly in reimporting their products. They would grow to become proud of what they do and also derive financial benefits there in.
The current politization of the project is needless. Everything should not be prone to politics which is why this commentator commends President Ahmed Bola Tinubu for sending the Vice- President, Kassim Shettima to commission the project for use. All states should have their own IPP to help the people wave goodbye to power failure.