Rotimi Amaechi,
minister of transportation and former governor of Rivers state, made
false claims about Nigeria generating 7,000MW of electricity under
President Muhammadu Buhari, TheCable can confirm.
In an interview with Osasu Igbinedion,
after the launch of the Kaduna-Abuja railway line, Amaechi said Nigeria
was generating 7,000MW of electricity before the resumption of militant
activities in the Niger Delta region.
He blamed the militants – Niger Delta Avengers – for poor power generation in Africa’s largest economy.
“Don’t forget that until these so-called
Avengers began to bomb, we had got to 7,000 megawatts, and what he
promised was ten at the end of the first term,” Amaechi had said.
“By the time the avengers, or whatever
they call them started bombing, the minister of power, had driven the
thing to 7,000 megawatts. Unfortunately, they began to hit the gas
facilities, so what would you do?”
FACT: Nigeria, in its 55-year history, has never generated 7,000MW
Contrary to Amaechi’s claim, TheCable can confirm that Nigeria has never generated as much as 7,000MW in its entire existence.
Electricity generation in Nigeria is
said to have begun under the British colonial government back in 1896,
while the Nigerian Electricity Supply Corporation (NESCO) came on board
in the late 1920s.
Ignoring the above, and tracing our records to 1960, when Nigeria got her independence, the government said, in a memorandum of understanding signed with the United States government, that
it had built power plants to generate about 6,000 MW of electricity by
2014. NERC data shows the government fell short of its projection.
According to Wall Street Journal,
which quoted the World Bank and Energy Information Administration,
Nigeria produces less than half as much electricity as North Dakota for
249 times more people.
Meanwhile, the federal ministry of power,
has said the highest level of power generation in the country, in the
space of over half a century, was recorded on February 2, 2016, when the
country generated 5,074 MW.
This 1,926 MW short of Amaechi’s claim.
As at July 26, when Amaechi made this claim, Nigerian Electricity Regulation Commission (NERC) data showed that power generation peaked at 3,082 MW for the week.
Babatunde Fashola, minister of power, who spoke at The Royal Institute of International Affairs, Chatham House,
on August 1, also reiterated the work done on power generation in
Nigeria, with emphasis on a power peak around 5,000MW for 2016.
Vice President Yemi Osinbajo, who spoke
at the University of Ibadan, the country’s premier university in May
said: “Early in the life of this administration late last year and early
this year, power generation was possibly at its best”.
“Nigeria, for the first time, was
actually generating 5,000megawatts, which was the first time it will
happen in the history of the country,” Osinbajo added, contrary to Amaechi.
FACT: Nigeria was not in recession under Jonathan
The minister, who also served as speaker
of the Rivers state house of assembly for eight years, also claimed
that there was economic recession, under the administration of former
president Goodluck Jonathan.
“If you remember as governor, I said
we’re broke. The minister for finance (Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala) came to my
office in Abuja here and pleaded with me that I shouldn’t say it again,”
Amaechi said.
“So I knew as chairman of governors’ forum, that we had gone into recession under Goodluck (Jonathan).”
First: What is recession?
The International Monetary Fund (IMF), CNNMoney, New York Times and
leading economic bodies agree that a recession can be easily identified
by “two consecutive quarters of decline in a country’s real (inflation
adjusted) gross domestic product (GDP)”.
They, however, add that on a global
scale, one may need more than this metric to call a recession. IMF
particularly says “it is often better to consider a wider set of
measures of economic activity to determine whether a country is indeed
suffering a recession”.
Second: Can recession be covered up?
Amaechi alleged that the Goodluck Jonathan administration covered up the recession.
According to the National Bureau of
Economic Research (NBER), a private research organisation, which
maintains a chronology of the beginning and ending dates of US
recessions, recession cannot be covered up.
The NBER’s Business Cycle Dating
Committee defines a recession as “a significant decline in economic
activity spread across the economy, lasting more than a few months,
normally visible in production, employment, real income, and other
indicators”.
Goodluck Jonathan became Nigerian president on May 5, 2010 and relinquished power by May 29, 2015.
Central Bank of Nigeria data shows that there was never a single quarter of negative GDP growth
from 2010 to 2015, and no “two consecutive quarters of decline
(negative growth) in a country’s real (inflation adjusted) gross domestic
product (GDP)”.
According to World Bank and the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) opendata project, Nigeria experience annual economic growth ranging from 7.8 percent in 2010 to 2.7 percent in 2015.
Other economic metrics, such as inflation, unemployment, also do not show any signs of recession.
According to NBS, Jonathan’s
administration saw unemployment spike above 10 percent in 2012 from
about five percent in 2010. Jonathan left Nigeria with 8.2 percent
unemployment.
The administration also moved inflation
from 12.9 percent in May, 2010 to nine percent in May, 2015. No
economic indices highlighted by the IMF, World Bank and NBS showed
recession within 2010 and 2015.
via The Cable
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