How To Unlock Nigeria’s Potential By Liyel Imoke

Nigeria’s former power minister, Liyel Imoke said the country must tackle insecurity and its power deficit to unlock its huge potential.

“We have experienced banditry, kidnapping, armed killings, mass kidnapping, and illegal mining. These days, we can’t go to a big gathering without seeing someone who has been kidnapped before. This is one of our new realities,” he stated.

Imoke, the former governor of Cross River state, speaking at Lokoja, Kogi state last week said that the power deficit and the slowness in Nigeria’s transition to a fully digital economy were challenges impeding national growth and development.

“These are challenges that impede our growth as a nation.  They make us less globally competitive.  If you look at electricity insecurity and the digital economy and if we tackle these, we will be on our way to economic growth.”

He noted insurgency and the emergence of Boko Haram, which split into ISWAP, stating ethnic tension is a contributory cause of communal violence. In contrast, grievances in the Niger Delta caused a lot of insecurity in the region in the 2000s.

Imoke spoke about organised private crimes in the Gulf of Guinea, which created  insecurity in the area and separatist marginalisation in the southeast region, leading to agitation

He stated that, for instance, between 2009 and 2020, insurgency by Boko Haram alone resulted in over 40,000 deaths.

Imoke listed poverty, a high unemployment rate, which was in 1999 put at six per cent, and 22 per cent in 2022 but which as of today is approaching 40 per cent, weak governance and corruption as well as climate change, as some of the factors that contributed or fuelled insecurity in the country.

He also listed the proliferation of small arms and violent crimes across the country as a sore thumb, lamenting that there were more arms with some non-state actors put in their hands by desperate politicians and which at the end of elections, were not retrieved from them and on which they now depended to survive.

Saying that hope was not lost, Imoke declared that successive administrations had succeeded in degrading Boko Haram and recovering territories in the Northeast hitherto seized by the group.

“The military was able to degrade the group and reclaim the areas in the Northeast around Maiduguri.”

He listed other successes as the decrease in Boko Haram insurgency and deaths by 23 per cent according to the global terrorism index, adding that “there is also reduction of militancy in the Niger Delta as there is no more MEND in the region.”

He continued: “Oil production has significantly rebounded until recently because, during the era of MEND, oil production dropped below 1.5 m barrels per day.

“Anti-piracy measures launched through NIMASA and international collaborators to reduce piracy in the Gulf of Guinea decreased the scourge by 58 per cent between 2020 and 2021.

“In the Southeast, the arrest of Nnamdi Kanu is an achievement in the region…The Nigerian government has increased its surveillance measures; its counter-insurgency operation has been used in combating terrorism.  We now have drone technology and others to attack security issues. The persistent Boko Haram issue has been watered down, but there is a humanitarian issue. About 2.7m people have been affected. The UN said that 350,000 people have died as a result of insurgency.”

He, however, noted that the Herder-farmers’ conflict was still ongoing, pointing out that over 2,600 people were reportedly killed in 2021 alone.

The former Cross River State governor said that continued separatist agitation had led to the death of police officers as well as IPoB members, adding that there had been extrajudicial killings and arbitrary arrests, among others.

He said a multifaceted approach was required to effectively tackle security issues in Nigeria, recommending among others community policing, which should be legally regulated, deployment of vigilance groups in securing the communities, and considering decentralisation of security rather than centralisation that has not worked.

He also established a nexus between security and economy, arguing that “until we can address the state  of our economy, we will not be able to address security issues effectively.”

He stated that education, skill acquisition, entrepreneurship training, and access to SMES funding were key, adding that a strong and comprehensive rural development programme was necessary to address banditry and farmer-herder conflicts.

“I am a strong believer in peace and mediation. If the government can establish dialogue platforms between farmers and herders, it would reduce competition over land,” he said.

He also said that the procurement process must be transparent and resources should be deployed in the welfare and training of security personnel, adding that the nation’s judicial system must be able to tackle impunity.

While dwelling on the power deficit, Imoke said that there was a lack of continuation of policies and programmes, pointing out that “your predecessor is your most valuable material.  We always assume that our predecessor did not know anything, and there is a tendency to want to start afresh.  It is important for me to always go back to my predecessor to ask for guidance.”

Admitting that the electricity problem in Nigeria is the most humongous ever, Imoke said that with over 200 million Nigerians, the country’s installed capacity was like 13,000 megawatts.  He said: “It sounds like good news, but we only manage to distribute an average of 4,000 megawatts whereas there are potentially distributable  20,000 megawatts.”

He revealed some sobering comparative statistics about per capita electricity consumption by Nigeria and some countries on the African continent based on recent data.

According to the data referred to by Imoke, “Nigeria per capita electricity consumption is between 150 and 200 kilowatts hours per year (kilowatts hour is the amount of electricity delivered to each household in the country in a year); Ghana is between 800 and 1000 kilowatts hour per year; South Africa is between 4000 and 5000 kilowatts hours per year while Ivory coast is between  500 and 600 kilowatts hour per year.”

Imoke lamented the Nigerian situation, adding that “these tell you the strengths of industrial bases of these countries.”

He noted that despite numerous reforms in Nigeria, the power sector still struggles.

Imoke asked if there was a solution in the face of growing demand. He resolved the question somewhat in the negative, pointing out that with the exponential growth in Nigeria’s population, there was a concomitant rising demand for the electricity supply.

On the digital economy, Imoke said the growth in e-commerce platforms like Jumia and others allows competition and efficiency.

“We are in the fourth industrial revolution, a digital revolution. We missed out on the first, second, and third industrial revolutions. It is for us now as a nation, with a deliberateness of government policy, not to lose out on the fourth industrial revolution.

“All the three sectors-security, power and digital economy – are critical to our growth.  The three are intertwined challenges that Nigeria must address to unlock her potential.

“With the collective effort of all, Nigeria can truly emerge as a global leader. Let us seize this moment to build a secure, electrified, and digitalised Nigeria that offers prosperity, growth, and development.”