You see it as a slogan, a legend boldly written on the walls of many rooms of energy-conserving organizations or enterprises: will the last person to leave please turn off all the lights? Sometimes, it is expressed, not as a question but as a categorical demand: will the last person to leave please turn off all the lights! High energy bills cut into the profit margin of enterprises. With organizations that are not profit making, the underlying logic is the same: the operating capital of the organization must be spent wisely otherwise the organization’s future may be compromised irreparably. More generally, this slogan or mantra is part of the “Green” culture and thought of conservationists all over the world: the resources of our planet, though renewable, are not infinite in supply; we must use them with consideration for the needs of those who will come after us, just as those who came before us did a lot of conservation so that we of present, living generations could have resources to consume. In other words, the logic of our mantra is this: turn off all the lights when you leave at the end of the day so that tomorrow there will still be lights to turn on. Our defeated ruling party seems either utterly unaware of or completely indifferent to this wisdom of prudent organizations and enterprises, this wisdom, indeed, of the ages.
The most rampant and notable manifestations of this reverse or counter-logic of the PDP to conservation of resources for the incoming, successor administration and future generations of Nigerians can be seen in the spate of last minute projects and procurement of foreign loans that the party, both at the federal and state levels began to launch or announce after its defeat by the APC. Coupled with these are last minute appointments of its chieftains to posts that carry with them, explicitly or implicitly, considerable financial remuneration. A case in point in this regard was the announcement two weeks ago of the appointment of a large group of new Pro-Chancellors and Chairmen of Councils to our federal universities. I shall come back to this particular item later in this piece. For now, let me turn my attention to what I consider the most portentous and unconscionable item of all, this being the announcement barely three weeks ago of the commitment of our country to the construction and commissioning of nuclear power plants through the signing of a joint venture agreement between the Nigerian Atomic Energy Commission (NAEC) and Rosatom, a Russian state-owned corporation that builds, commissions and maintains atomic energy power plants in many parts of the planet, especially in the developing world. Readers will remember, I hope, that I dealt with this issue in last week’s column. I return to it this week from a new and very urgent perspective.
This new perspective can be indicated with this question: why is it the case that NAEC made the announcement of Nigeria’s commitment to a “nuclear future” in electricity power generation at the very end of the life of the Jonathan administration and the rule of the PDP? As I revealed in last week’s column, NAEC came into existence in 1976; and for years now its CEO, Dr. Franklin Osaisai, has been going around Africa and the world making flowery and improbable declarations about a rosy and necessary future for atomic power plants in Nigeria and Africa. But for more than four decades, nothing concrete, practical and definitive was done about these declarations until less than a month to the end of the PDP as a ruling party. From this, we are left with no other conclusion but this: atomic power plants are the last and most cynical bequest of the defeated ruling party to a country that has finally rejected its long period of wasteful, catastrophic misrule.
I base this conclusion on the presupposition that Dr. Osaisai and NAEC could never have entered the agreement withRosatom and committed Nigeria to a frightening future of atomic power plants without the knowledge and approval of the Jonathan administration. Statutorily, NAEC is responsible and reports to the Federal Ministry of Science and Technology; it cannot and does not take any actions and decisions without that Ministry’s approval. So far, at least in media reporting of the agreement between NAEC and Rosatom, no mention has been made at all of the Ministry’s involvement in the brokering of the agreement. But neither has a disclaimer come from the Ministry. Knowing how terribly dysfunctional, messy and rudderless administrative processes have been in Jonathan’s governance style and culture, it is not improbable that the decision to commit our country to a future of nuclear power plants was made completely without any due and proper administrative processes. My guess is this (and I admit that it is only a guess): having dreamed and talked for years and decades about nuclear power plants in Nigeria, NAEC and Dr. Osaisai finally saw their chance in the redoubled messiness and chaos of the dying days and weeks of the PDP and the Jonathan administration. It is this guess that furnished the metaphors of darkness and light in the title of this piece: even as the PDP slips irreversibly into the darkness of historic oblivion, it has turned on the full, frightening and spectral lights of atomic power plants in Nigeria.
Fortunately, the lights can be turned off on the agreement between NAEC and Rosatom. In other words, a decision to commit our country to a future of nuclear power plants is a decision that should go into the darkness that will soon consume the PDP. Ordinarily, all decisions hastily and haphazardly made by an outgoing administration in the last few weeks of its life are not considered binding on the incoming administration – unless they are deemed beneficial to the country. At any rate, going nuclear in power generation when we have an abundance of natural gas and hydrological resources is nothing short of irrationalism, not to talk of the historic worldwide turning away from nuclear power plants. Thus, one of the very first things that the new administration should do is terminate the agreement with Rosatom and open the matter for full debate and review by the Nigerian public. Indeed, it is surprising that a country, any country can go nuclear without a full debate having taken place among lawmakers, civil society organizations and all interested stakeholders.
Similar considerations apply to the appointments in the last few weeks of PDP chieftains as Pro-Chancellors and Chairmen of Councils of federal universities. On this particular issue we come to one of the most crucial things that will indicate whether the APC will be a different ruling party from the PDP. Here, nothing but the complete depoliticization of the appointment of Chairmen and members of the governing councils of our universities will show that the APC wants to establish a break with the decadent “ilabe” mentality and culture of the PDP as a ruling party. Mark my words, compatriots: if the chairmen and council members recently appointed by the PDP are removed and replaced with APC chieftains and benefactors, that will be a sure sign that things in general will not change fundamentally from the period of the reign of the PDP to that of the APC. It is no secret in our federal and state universities that the majority of the chairmen and members of the governing councils of our tertiary institutions regard their appointments as juicy, lucrative rewards for their positions in the ruling party. For long, ASUU and all the other unions in our tertiary institutions have decried this tradition and called for its termination. This will be one of the most eloquent indicators of the genuineness of the “change” manifesto of the APC.
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