Senator Rashidi Adewolu Ladoja, the Chairman, National Conference Energy Committee and a  former Governor of Oyo State, walked tall as hundreds of APC, PDP members in Ido Local Government Area of  the  state embraced the party that he leads.  In an interview with Sunday Vanguard at his Bodija GRA, Ibadan home later, he spoke on  the energy situation in Nigeria vis-à-vis what his committee at the confab has done and expressed  optimism that his party, Accord, now stands the chance to win Oyo State come 2015.  Accord Party made a surprise outing as it went to election under three months of  its formation in the state winning seven of  the 16 state legislative seats; four of six House of Representatives seats and slugged it out with the now Governor Abiola Ajimobi on a 275,000 to 340,000 votes basis. Excerpts:
You have always been concerned about the energy situation in Nigeria.  Would you say that your being the Chairman of the National Conference Committee on Energy has provided you the opportunity to get over your worry?
Being in the confab energy committee, I believe, has just confirmed my professional concern about the energy situation in Nigeria particularly the power sector.  But whether my being there will solve the problems is another thing because the conference can make recommendations but the decision still remains with the government.  What I discovered is that the recommendations have always been there.  They were not non-existent.    The roadmap is there. So, recommendations are not the problems but the implementation of those things.
There has been stagnation since 1986.  The government has not added any generating plants since that time.  We need production to grow everyday.  Of course there are some plants that were added by Shell, Agip. We still talk about 4,000 megawatts whereas we should be talking about 45,000 megawatts or more.  And the major problem, from what the policy is today, is that Nigeria has not yet accepted that power is a strategic issue.  We still look at it in terms of naira and kobo.  Whereas developed countries look at power from the angle of being strategic.
In Germany, they have about 200,000 megawatts and their need is just about 25,000 megawatts.  So, they have more than two times of their need.  That is why it is possible for them, in one day, to say, ‘close down all the nuclear ones’ which gave them about 15,000 megawatts.
So, from that angle, we can say that we are still far from understanding the world politics because power is part of the world politics.  South Africa is a population of about a third of Nigeria’s population.  They have 45,000 megawatts and Nigeria has 4,000 megawatts.  So, you can understand that we are very far from getting there.
What have you really discovered?
We have discovered that if we have to leave power in the hands of the private sector for them to grow it, we will not come out of the woods in the next 20 years.  And from what I saw, out Vision 20:2020 may just be a spent bill and I think they have just dabbled into areas that are not really the problems.
Chief Olusegun Obasanjo, in his last days, established the NIPP, National Integrated Power Project, which he said would add 4,000 megawatts to the national grid but its implementations, even since Obasanjo left office, many of them are yet to come on stream.  Either the sites chosen were not feasible or there is no gas.
I just assume that there is more to the situation with the NNPC than what we can see.  Because, if you look at it, those turbines were not normally meant to be kept in the shelves, they are not supposed to be kept in the store for eight years before they start working.
When you finished in Belgium and became a chemical engineer, you worked with Total and rose through the cadres to become the operations manager. Meaning that you are  abreast of the situation in the energy sector and the conference energy committee that you are heading now is seen as an opportunity for you to translate your many ideas into quality recommendations to guide government.  Since insufficient gas supply has been blamed for the bulk of our power generation inadequacies, why must Nigeria  stick to gas to generate power?
It should not be, but we have concentrated on gas whereas there is abundance of coal.  Our recommendation is that they should put power plants where they have the raw materials (means of generation).
It is not necessary for us to pipe gas to Sokoto and Kano when there is coal in those places.  There is also coal in Bauchi and there is coal virtually everywhere except the South-west. Where they have cola they should put power plants there and also where there is gas they should put power pl

See copy and paste. You suppose edit am small na. Wel done for stating the source sha btw when ws d last time nigerians enjoyd electricity sef. They wil never suspend payment of bills bt cn suspend dr epileptic power supply. Mtcheeew