Atedo Peterside, Chairman of the technical committee of the National Council on Privatization, in this interview with the Financial Times, said that experts in the power sector cannot exactly tell how much unmet demand is there in the power sector. How big is the unmet demand for power in Nigeria?
The gospel truth is that nobody knows. All the experts appear to be just guessing. What we do know is that, as soon as the privatisation is finished and infrastructure improves significantly, there will be a surge of new demand. There are companies that never bothered to hook up to the national grid, but soon they will. The growth in demand will be exponential. That’s why you have all the global power company CEOs coming to Nigeria because they can smell what’s happening. If you are the boss of GE, you don’t have to be a genius to know that you are not going to sell power plants in Spain, Portugal, Ireland or Greece. If you want to go hunting, go where the ducks are flying. For the power sector, that’s Nigeria.
Why has it taken so many years for reform to take place?
Vested interests. We have had a huge army of politicians, contractors, civil servants, employees – you name it – milking the system by getting, executing or overseeing power contracts from the government that did not translate into getting light into our houses. The whole thing was a racket.
Why did Nigeria decide to privatise all the assets at once?
Some countries have done it one piece at a time. That way, big investors can stay out and wait to see what happens. We opted for a big bang approach. I always argued that the political backlash from selling one asset is going to be the same as for selling all of them. And that way you are telling investors: the game is on. It made sure that every serious power company in the world was going to take notice.
How much interest was there in the process?
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