For over a month, Emeka Eze, the Director General of the Bureau of Public Procurement (BPP), has been riding roughshod over the power sector reform and privatisation programme. Driven by his ego and a debilitating turf war, he almost single handedly dismantled the entire programme, and is absurdly unrepentant for his actions. Mind you, Mr. Eze could not have gotten as far as he did without the explicit and implicit support of some individuals and interested parties inside and outside government. He was egged on the by the Indian High Commission, Power Grid of India, officials in the power ministry who would rather preserve the status quo, and most distressingly, the Attorney General and Minister of Justice, Mohammed Adoke.

It was Mr. Eze, who though a memo to President Goodluck Jonathan, that got the president to almost terminate the management contract executed between the Bureau of Public Enterprises (BPE), on behalf of the Federal Government, the Transmission Company of Nigeria (TCN), and Manitoba Hydro International, a Canadian electric power and gas utility with footprints in sub-Saharan Africa, Saudi Arabia, China, Afghanistan and several other countries. In fact, he had succeeded by Sunday, November 11, when the president signed off on his request that the Manitoba contract be cancelled. The only modification that the president made to Mr. Eze’s demand was that the power ministry, within 30 days, handled the selection of a new contractor under a new contract to run TCN. Mr. Eze had ambitiously offered to do the job himself in 30 days. Had common sense not prevailed by Thursday last week, when the president and Vice President Namadi Sambo were properly advised by well meaning Nigerians and members of the private sector of the incalculable damage this would have done to the power reform programme, Nigeria would have been plunged once again into the dark ages.

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http://www.thisdaylive.com/articles/emeka-eze-s-misadventure/131021/