 to be talking power this time, obviously we have had some dislocations with so many weighty people around trying to shuffle the decks properly. We want to take power a little earlier at the time, the focal person on power was at the airport at Heathrow trying to catch his flight to Nigeria, but he seems to be taking off, I believe. He tried to leave us some of his thoughts. I hope that we can go to age. Unfortunately, I think it's a little too long for our format, but we'll take some of his thoughts and then we'll get our panel to begin to engage the issue. One thing is very, very important. Without power, we will not be able to go to any manufacturing economy. Without a manufacturing economy, we will not be able to create the jobs that we need to create for the millions of young people out there. And the goal of the Obidachi administration is essentially to get a demographic dividend out of our youth bulge. What has not been done has led us to where we are and the youth, the median age of these countries, world 18. These youth that are a huge asset have become an albatross to us. That's why we have all the insecurity in the land because we did not get power right and development strategy that would make the young of our country an asset rather than a frightening liability that it seems to have become. But we saw China turn that around. We've seen India work that around. We must do that and do that much, much better in Nigeria. So if we can take Jerome now, let's take a few minutes of his recording of his analysis. But if he's not, then we'll push into this conversation. Sam Amadi is supposed to join us. I don't know if Professor Amadi has a keyed in. And Sam ran NEC. That's the National Electricity Regulatory Agency Commission for quite a number of years and has clearly deep insights into the performance of the power sector. What is certain, and I did speak some to that in an earlier segment, is that the power problem has been with us for a whole generation. If there's anything that suggests that there has been something fundamentally wrong in how Nigeria is governed, it is power. Vietnam survived a long and terrible war. Some of us who grew up in the 60s were defined by the Vietnam War. And carpet bombing and all of that, Vietnam was literally plastered off the map. What did Vietnam do? At the end of the war, needing to rebuild infrastructure completely, they brought in badges with turbines on them, went up the Mekong River, stationed them at points, generated power that drove their industrial revival, or if you will call it revival, because it was not industrialized before the war started. A couple of years down the line, here's the real scenario. Every March, April, May, Vietnamese businessmen descend on Nigeria, like Locusts, buying cashew nuts, believe it or not. They would load sacks of cashew nuts, their favorite destinations in some of those states. And then they ship cashew nuts from Nigeria to Vietnam, where they are processed value add, the value chain we're talking about. They buy it for peanuts in Nigeria and then move it to Vietnam. They process cashew nuts. I'm going as busy as cashew nuts. And then they sell them to those Western airlines and Nigerian big men eat it in first class, business class, money that has escaped their country. And the fundamental difference is that the Vietnamese were smart enough to realize how important power was that they got emergency power through those badges. And while those badges were busy providing power of an emergency type, they began to put proper power infrastructure in place. In fact, as they began to get rid of those badges, Lagos state government actually got some of them to come here, the famous Emerald Scandal in Lagos, in the early part of our democracy. So here we are a generation since that time. Nigeria is still producing 5,000, 3,000 megawatts of power. Egypt over there. And I'm trying to be sure that Sam is on. And somebody confirmed to you Sam has come on. Oh Sam, you're making me speak all this grammar. But what I was asking for you to come on. Okay, I just finished my thought on Egypt and I'll come to you to go on. So Egypt down there, you know, Assisi, president of Egypt, gets to power. He wants to increase power generation in Egypt. Nigeria wants to do the same thing. Both countries turn to the same company, Siemens. And what happens? Egypt says, look, we can provide you some sovereign or some guarantees, sovereign guarantees. Go and raise money, build up this power, want it ready in X number of months. About the same time when Nigeria says, ah, okay, Siemens, we'll find the money, we'll do this. This one year, it was going back to our federal executive council. By the time we finished talking about it, Egypt had several thousand megawatts additional power in place running. Government hadn't spent any money. Nigeria had collected all the monies who could have used to do better things, improve education. Okay, Siemens, take money. When will our power be available? We're going back and forth and back and forth. Something is wrong. Sam, take it away from there. What is wrong? Well, Rob, thank you very much. I think it's good to tell you the example of Egypt. Egypt has not even privatized. So Egypt has added about 10,000 megawatts to the capacity in the last couple of years. First, it's two days probably. One is modeling, the other is project management. So in terms of modeling, we are more ideological. In the 90s, in 2000, we rolled out the national reform policy map. And the focus was to restructure the power industry. First, on bundling, we should, we are going to commercialize, privatize, and then privatize. In 2005, we had the act, the law that prescribed some of these steps. In 2010, when they had a result roadmap, I think there was too much focus on privatizing without reforming. So first, in order to corporateize, what that meant was that we were not going to run the power sector as fully commercialized corporate entities with corporate governance. We didn't do that. We got to bureaucratize the power industry, even though we have literally 18 different companies. We run them as the experiment of the minister of power. Appartments were based on merits. We didn't have clear corporate governance. We are these companies. We have clear mandates to be profitable, to be managed efficiently, and to produce clearly established mandates. And so we modeled into privatizing. And the focus was so much on sales assets to persons, probably Nigerian businessmen, working with some, MOU with some foreign firms. So, unlike Egypt, that defined a project parameter. We did 10,000 megawatts in four years. And to do that, we had to outsource, give sales, a clear project and deliver templates and deliver for us. We didn't do any of those things. We had a company called Power Holding Company with 18 branches, six generation, 11 distribution outlets. Supposedly companies but without any independence to make corporate policy and manage efficiently. So the modeling, the notion that once we have circulation, privatize. Now, we privatize without building the capacity. We privatize without strong firm regulatory framework. I did the first audit of the NEPA ever. So, the first audit of their finances was in 2013, 2012, 2013, run up to privatizing. By the time we privatize, we didn't even have a clear customer numbers, not only discuss new their customers, those who bought the assets didn't have any clear data as to the losses, the difference of the assets. So we just believed that the magic of private sector just privatize. And that's why many years after today, everybody is saying, oh, it didn't work. It didn't work because we didn't pursue it with clear-minded project management process. Red seeking, corruption, and this modeling, this lack of clarity as to what we're doing. So Egypt, like you said, was very clear. These companies are still publicly owned. Now, they are planning to privatize. They had a very systematic and clear process of building capacity, commercializing. They are planning by 2024 or thereabouts. They will now start letting out these companies so that they are now privatized. After they have attained capacity, they have practiced a commercial process. They have ingrained corporate efficiency. Then in order to manage public sector requirements, in order to pull public finance from this asset, they hand over to private sector who now have both corporate code, corporate practices, going to companies that are solvent and have power to sell. We are trading 4,000 megawatts for 200 million people across 11 discos. That is not even a capacity to start with. So our market is notional. Egypt, their market will be real because as a product, there is corporate structure, there is efficiency, and there is now commerciality. People know how to trade, pay, and receive their money and remit their finances. Today, we still have a market that is insolvent. We are the debt to third of power so it is never paid for. The debt is filled out of control, and gas suppliers are not very happy to sell to the generators. So we have over 2,000 or more stranded capacity. That means power is ready to go to the grid, but no gas or no transmission to evacuate power or to direct those power. So I think the key point at this point to make is we are not sure. We didn't have, we wanted to reform the market, the commercial, the electricity market. We didn't reform the state, the government that was really driving it. It was not very clear as to what they want to achieve, and it was a government that was willing to allow the sector to be managed in clear corporate efficient manner. Up to now, we don't even have a clear board of governors for TCM that is insulated from government control, instability in the management, or even the government side of it. Today up to now, we don't have an independent system operator as act wanted. We have a ring-phase ISO, a ring-phase TSP, so efficiency in the transmission side. And this is a part of the thing that the PTOB manifesto talks about. Creating an independent system operator is an independent service provider, so that these entities can be monitored, they can be efficient and accountable to market players, and they will have clear deliverable, and they will have penalty for failure. So they will behave like real market players who suffer penalty for failure and who have been ordered for efficiency. So clearly, the modeling problems that we are not clear as to what we want to do. And we have too much ideological fate in just privatization. We tell them that privatization builds from efficient and accessible privatization builds from clear corporatization and commercialization, in which case privatizing would be handing efficient entities to private sector in order for government to recover savings from finances that will be used for other things. It's not handing over inefficient entities to inefficient private operators without clear corporate governance and regulatory and policy control to ensure efficient service delivery. Thank you, Sam. This is an important point to make. And that's why I want us to listen to Jerome. Dr. Jerome O'Colo is one of our best and brightest around the power sector. He has worked assiduously with the manifesto committee. He's our full person on power in the policy review and future view committee. And he's tried to elucidate that. We also have Rick, who is an American investor in this sector. I wonder if we have linked up with him. Yes, I'm here. Oh, okay. Rick, you're welcome. Please. Thank you. We could use the benefits of your reflection on this manifesto that you have had the opportunity to look at. Yeah, I'm happy to comment. First, let me thank you for the opportunity to join you all today. And second, let me congratulate Governor Obi and the team that put together the manifesto quite frankly with regard to power and energy I don't think they're far off the mark. I think it's a very comprehensive and very compelling strategy and Dr. Sam is just addressing some of the structural issues having to deal with the institutional framework of the power sector. And I would listen to him because I think he knows what he's talking about. And setting those issues aside, I would say that the conditions that need to be met for international investment in Nigeria are going a little bit farther than what I read in the manifesto. Let me see if I can put my video on here. Yeah, we'd love to see you. That's for sure. Here we go. All right. Good morning. Afternoon, I guess. Yeah, good morning for you. What I was going to go with that was that for international investment to come into Nigeria and the power sector the first thing that you need to have is a credible and bankable power purchase agreement. People need to take or pay guarantee of a certain amount of money over time so that they can pay back the debt on the project, on the capex and can have the necessary funds in order to operate and maintain the plan. And that's pretty obvious. One thing that I would say that Nigeria should do is to ensure that particularly with technologies like solar and wind there is a clause in the PPA contract so that the materials, the solar panels, the metal frames and in wind the towers and the blades are all recyclable. You don't want to find yourself in 40 years with square miles of waste material that is going to deteriorate over time and that's an easy thing to fix if you put it in the power purchase agreement. As far as I know that has not yet been included. The other requirements that need to be met are a little bit less obvious and one of them has to do with what Dr. Sam was just talking about and that is the transmission infrastructure for large-scale projects has to be adequately constructed so that the big power plants can inject into the grid. And there are a lot of places where projects have been proposed where the transmission infrastructure is not adequate to absorb that power and therefore putting a plant up doesn't make an awful lot of sense. And the last criteria is one that's not really very obvious but from my perspective is among the most important and that is we need to find a way to have Nigerian investors and I mean the people of Nigeria not the government of Nigeria but the people of Nigeria have to be ready to step forward and both commit to and commit financial resources to the project and benefit from it. The worst thing that could happen is that we end up with all foreign investment in Nigerian energy and everybody in Nigeria is paying a power tariff that's eventually leaving the country to the benefit of just the international investors but let me tell you that from my perspective the most important enhancement of the long-term survivability of a project is the commitment of the local community and having that community dimension involved in the investment and elsewhere I think is a really really important thing. The other thing that I would comment on with regard to the manifesto is that while I totally agree that the large-scale solar and wind is a good thing to pursue and I did see some sections in the manifesto talking about smaller grids associated with industrial parks and local communities and all of that is good but there are other technologies in addition to solar and wind that could play a role in I would say making the renewable energy revolution something that touches everyone and I think particularly about biogas technology where the agricultural sector is both a contributor to the what we call the feedstock and also a beneficiary in terms of not only the electricity but also the effluent from the digester which is a spectacular fertilizer and amendment and so this integration of the agriculture sector and in a way the waste management sector and the energy sector is an ideal circular economy construct and I think that's an area that kind of low hanging fruit of the most beneficial projects could be identified. Any of the industrial parks around the country that are doing food processing are a logical place for this technology it's at a much smaller scale we're talking about projects that are in the 3 to 10 megawatt range for the most part but that's what makes them local and they're 24 hours a day and they're you know base load electricity as well as heat for processing the industrial park and allowing for the local investment to come into the project. So I'll stop there because I don't want to get on a soapbox but those are some thoughts that I had in reviewing the manifesto. Well thank you so very much Rick because Power is such an international community and investors are going to come from all over the world and if we don't get a good perspective of a view from outside then we'll be lost here so we truly value your input. We're going to go very quickly because we don't have so much time but Austin a general perspective on the challenge of power before we try and still get in some of Jerome's thoughts on this segment. My own idea or what I have to say is this the issue of power challenge is more political one is political, two is vested interests and then three is that the importance of power is so that apart from helping industrialization and all that manufacturing bringing the costs, the economics of it and the other you know it's important. Security yes. Part of his pessimism about the future back then when he wrote that book nearly 25 years ago was you can't secure a place where there's no light at night anything can happen and stuff like that. When I think it was people in the house of Sanctis said that they were spending so much money powering the streetlights. But they thought they did show that power has actually helped them to reduce crime and worry in the United States. The streetslight are on and the crime rate reduced by 40%. Now another issue is that some of the things that Rick mentioned about the biogas and all that. When I was representing LBS in the UNIDO OPS organized private sector, the Japanese guy in charge of UNIDO then at one of the meetings he asked me and said I'm from a Boeing state. He said there was a project that I wanted to do with a Boeing state 10 years ago or more and that the government refused to provide counterpart funding. Since the state is good at producing rice, they could use right husks to generate power. What that means is that this rice husk will be used to generate power to encourage people to cut even more rice therefore providing employment for people but we're not able to capture that. And I think that based on what the manifesto and all that, if we have different sources of power it will thermal, solar and all the likes. It will go a long way to improving our power but I think that's it. You have Jerome.