About 20 Years ago, Prof Barth Nnaji, a Jonathan-era Minister of Power in Nigeria, plunged headlong into the task of setting up a gas-fired Power Plant in Aba, apparently oblivious of, or underestimating the reach of the Federal Government of Nigeria and the Federal Exclusive Legislative List of the Death-Dispensing 1999 Constitution.
The gas to power the Plant was to come from nearby oilfield Owaza, Abia State which was about 15 minutes derive from the Osisioma, Aba Location of the Power Plant.
Aba had been in great darkness and in dire need of Electricity since the decades-long Shutdown of the Oji-River Power Plant by the Federal Government of Nigeria since Electricity Generation and Transmission went into the Exclusive List under the 1979 Constitution.
Everything seemed perfect; then Nigeria began to happen to the Project.
First, the system tried to criminalize Barth Nnaji and he was hauled into EFCC detention for all manners of spurious claims for things that happened during his tenure as Minister of Power.
They pinned some conflict-of-interest malfeasance on him as erstwhile Minister of Power; they frustrated every effort to pipe gas to the Power Plant that had been completed since over 10 years.
But for the current raging Union Dispute and the attempt by a floundering illicit Federal Government to placate the East and douse the tension that accompanied the 2023 Presidential Electoral Robbery, the 1967 Alliance, masquerading as “Federal Government” would have continued their blockade of Gas to the Geometric Power Plant in Aba. There were also issues of Transmission Infrastructure which is also locked in on the Exclusive List.
The Federal Government’s capacity to frustrate this and other Developmental and Infrastructural Projects, flows from the 68-Item Federal Exclusive Legislative List of the 1999 Constitution.
Even with the Commissioning of the Power Plant, the fact that Gas remains on the Exclusive List, leaves the Power Plant at the mercy of Abuja as long as the Unitary Constitution of Nigeria remains in place.
Worse still, the prospects of expansion to cover more cities and locations beyond Aba and Abia will suffer from the limitations imposed by Buhari’s bogus Constitution Amendments that pretend to have opened up Electricity Generation and Transmission since the Amendments only allowed the States to Generate and Transmit within their State Geographical Boundaries.
Many of the characters that gathered in Aba to take credit for the operationalization and commissioning into Production, of the Geometric Power Plant, including the Representatives of the Federal Government were involved in the many decades of sabotaging and frustrating that Project; even if not directly, the fact that they still cling tenaciously to the Unworkable Unitary Constitutional Order for Nigeria, render them guilty by conduct and association, as Electricity remains detained from Nigerians, just as Refineries, Security and Major Infrastructure.
While every commendation to Barth Nnaji and whoever facilitated the realization of the Electricity Project would be in order, the Euphoria now trailing the take-off of that Project is grossly misleading as some, including those who cling to the debilitating Unitary Constitution of Nigeria are creating the impression that gradually, we will get to where the issues of infrastructure would be resolved across Nigeria. This is falsehood and deceit.
The urgency of the need to Dismantle the Anti-Progress, Anti-Development Unitary Constitution of Nigeria has not abated.
Geometric was a long-drawn accident that ended on a happy note. Let us get back to addressing Nigeria’s Sovereignty Question and the Union Dispute that has arisen therefrom, especially the untenable Unitary Structure of Nigeria and the enshackling 68-Item Federal Exclusive Legislative List of the Fraudulent 1999 Constitution.
Tony Nnadi.
NINAS Secretariat.
March 1, 2024.
