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World Bank chief joins Nigerian energy

Sun News Publishing
October 22, 2007

Nigeria’s quest for stable and uninterrupted electricity has got a boost as the World Bank Group’s foremost power expert, Paul Nickson, joins in the effort at revamping the country’s energy sector, which has, for decades, been in the doldrums.

Nickson, who quits the group after 17 years, with the last 13 years spent in the energy sector of the International Finance Corporation, has announced that he is joining the country’s first indigenous independent power producer, Geometric Power Limited, which is building, among others, a 250 million dollar power project to generate and distribute 140 megawatts of electricity in the industrial South eastern city of Aba, Abia State.

Nickson said, while explaining his decision to join the Nigerian firm: “Very few professional challenges I have faced in all regions of the world have moved me as what I have seen in Nigeria.
“Here is the biggest black nation on the planet with fantastic people waiting to take a technological pride of place in the world.
I see manufacturers, big and small, working admirably to make Nigeria the Taiwan of Africa, only to be held down by inadequate infrastructure. And four years ago when I met Aba Power Project promoters, I got infected by their energy, brilliance, enthusiasm and commitment to the transformation of their fatherland despite all odds. They want their nation to quickly join the league of fast industrialising countries.”

On Nickson’s decision join the Nigeria energy company, Ben Caven, an erstwhile executive director of Nigeria’s state-owned National Electric Power Authority (NEPA), now christened Power Holding Company of Nigeria (PHCN) said: “It is a pleasant surprise that Nickson, an eminently influential Canadian author of World Bank Guidelines on Utility Customer Management Manual, should sacrifice his career in the Bretton Woods institutions so as to contribute more robustly to the search for a grand solution to Nigeria’s paralyzing energy crisis. It shows a most critical part of the international business community is beginning to repose stupendous faith in the Nigerian possibility, especially in organized private sector-led growth.”

Engineer Caven, now the technical adviser to Geometric Power, believes that “Nigeria will definitely benefit from Nickson’s experience with carbon financings, having played a major role in the $20 million credits, which the IFC gave to Romania Munici Cogeneration and in the $28 million credits extended to Uganda for the development of the Bujagali. For his meritorious contributions, Nickson was promoted three times, between 1993 and 2005, a remarkable recognition in the conservative World Bank system, where he also received the World Bank President’s Excellence Award in 2002 and the IFC Corporate Award three years later. Presidential Special Adviser on Power, Engineer Joseph Makoju, has, meanwhile, commended Geometric Power Ltd for “attracting to our country high quality engineers and other world class professionals in the effort to satisfy the nation’s energy needs in the not too distant future.”

Geometric Power, he says, was bringing to Nigeria not only international expertise, but also foreign capital at a time some Nigerian-registered businesses are engaged in capital flight.
“The completion will be a milestone in Nigeria’s industrial drive and a fine tribute to the competence of indigenous engineers, who, if given the enabling environment, will shine brilliantly the world over,” observes the presidential adviser.

“For almost three years, Geometric Power generated and supplied electricity to NEPA under the Abuja Emergency Power scheme when I was serving as NEPA chief executive. Prof Nnaji and his group did all Nigerians proud, for not even a second was there a disruption in their service delivery.”

In a message to Prof Bart Nnaji, Nigeria ’s former Science and Technology Minister, who is now chairman of Geometric Power and the sole black director of a United States National Science Foundation centre in American history, Engr Makoju expresses satisfaction that the firm will complete the first of its independent power projects in Nigeria in the next one year.

Nickson has been involved in some 50 new major power projects across the world, about 50 per cent of all power deals financed in the last 14 years by the IFC, the private sector financing arm of the World Bank.

The projects include the hugely successful Tajikistan Pamir Energy Project, in the old
Commonwealth of Independent States, which he led, and the $900 million Rio Bravo 111 & 4 project in Mexico as well as the $930 million Pagbilao project in the Philippines.