netotse:

i'm passing out in two weeks and now i've become hot sturvs, everybody either wants to teach me something or wants me to teach them something. . .i've decided not to join all my friends in the first-to-msc/phd race, so that means i have to get a job, not really looking forward to it. but for me its the NPS(nigerian power sector) or bust!

I was even thinking about you during this week. Apparently GE has an office in my building.

@Topic, well. . . back to the same old same old. Arrived Lagos mid-week, only to find that the fuel matter was still very much a matter. Okay, we give up. 150 naira per litre it is? You guys win! Now can we have some petrol?

I can't believe January is already over. I need to kick-push my February 2010 objectives ASAP. I seem to have been coasting, although my team at work is up to any perceived challenges.

Peace.

Debosky
i hope u dont intend to call anybody tarado in ur place of work?
the way den go whoze u slap ehn

ol boi, how market? when u get back ur lappy, holla cos i wont let u rest
u knw what im talking about

Last week,
sort of bittersweet

I finished my share of the work and i think the client is ok with it , , Got some "Attaboys"

but unfortunately, a member of my team was shown the exit door, ,
project sponsor not liking his quality of work, and he was the only other "dudu" with me
and we are only 4 weeks into a potential 2 year contract, men i fear weather ooo

It just made me realise that working as a contract staff is high risk, high reward, every penny has to be kept in savings cos u can be booted at any time,

God dey sha, we will do our best and hopefully, it will get us far across the finish line

Meanwhile, Glory Glory Man United, And the Reds, keep marching ON ON ON!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

another week of intense pressure. . . . .

the year is shaping up and i think this year will be a lot better than last years cos of the lil things ive seen (i hope im right tho)

Suddenly the organised private sector in Nigeria are turning the heat on Sanusi for his ganja man style of restructuring; i just hope the whole shebang wont spoil market for awon boiz.

as the saying goes, no food for lazy man, im off to accra again to meet with ma people.

abeg, any redeemer in the house? its that time of the year again when we look to baba God for his mercies and blessings through prayers and fasting, i pray all our prayers are answered o

AjanleKoko:

I was even thinking about you during this week. Apparently GE has an office in my building.

Peace.

i think i have a friend serving there, might hit the place when i return to lagos

debosky:

When other areas are crying for extra capacity? Sounds like IBB is still pulling strings.

e no easy reach. . .he doesn't need to pull any strings, i dont even think his house is on any of the feeders sef. . .i'll check

since you're an engineer i'll explain it to you. . .the prob is our minister doesn't know what he's doing.
in minna the problem is distribution, they cant handle all the power we can give them, in abuja, the problem is transmission, the 330kV transformers are overloaded so even though they can distribute enough power for all of abuja, they dont have enough 330kV capacity to receive it. those are the two areas i'm familiar with but i can assure you the problem is the same all over nigeria, and meanwhile our dearest economist of a minister has been shouting generation all over the country, leading the poor nigerians to believe that an increase in generation will solve their problems. . .to be fair to him sha, it seems he has realised his mistake but i still feel an economist has no business being minister of power. even if 6000MW appeared today, light in nigeria wouldn't improve as much as people think it will.

@thread
i'm off to jebba dam tomorrow, want to see what they have been making noise about (people in jabba dam say theirs is finer that ours. . .ta!)


if you're in abuja or nassarawa buckle up, i just heard them reduce your allocation. . .so it means light bulbs are going to start going off(its not our fault o, we're generating 67% of our capacity now) its prolly all those yeye steam stations.

netotse:

e no easy reach. . .he doesn't need to pull any strings, i dont even think his house is on any of the feeders sef. . .i'll check

Maybe the Minister's girlfriend lives in that Minna location.

since you're an engineer i'll explain it to you. . .the prob is our minister doesn't know what he's doing.
in minna the problem is distribution, they cant handle all the power we can give them, in abuja, the problem is transmission, the 330kV transformers are overloaded so even though they can distribute enough power for all of abuja, they dont have enough 330kV capacity to receive it. those are the two areas i'm familiar with but i can assure you the problem is the same all over nigeria, and meanwhile our dearest economist of a minister has been shouting generation all over the country, leading the poor nigerians to believe that an increase in generation will solve their problems. . .to be fair to him sha, it seems he has realised his mistake but i still feel an economist has no business being minister of power. even if 6000MW appeared today, light in nigeria wouldn't improve as much as people think it will.

Interesting. So you an 'ordinary' graduate can describe just two aspects of the problem so succinctly and a whole minister can't?  I wonder who is advising these big shots. At least if the minister is unaware of the actual issues what are the technical advisers in PHCN or the ministry doing to guide him?  Hope he sees road quickly sha. 

Don't worry, when I build my waste-to-power facility, you'll be my plant manager! 

@ topic

Not been a fun day for me. These data gatherers are really slacking at their jobs. Can you imagine giving less than 3 weeks to gather a whole year's worth of data?  Now I'll have to go begging people to release figures to me. With the ongoing re-org, I dunno how receptive they'll be.

Anyways, from now till Feb 20th all I'll be seeing are tonnes, MWh, kg, gigajoules and m3. 

This is aside from my usual explosion work. For the first time in my life I want to score an F grade.  Anything grade A or B na bad thing o - that means end of the company and killing hundreds of people.

Bonus levels should be announced either this week or next since the main company results are out. Good (for me at least) they didn't meet analyst expectations so the price has dropped nearly 15% from the peak just last month. Perfect for me because I'm just gonna start buying shares next month! 

@ tkb

We go yarn maybe Friday. . . .right now all I can see is matrices. . . I feel like Neo. 

It's nice to be back in the house (have I really been out in the real sense like that ?)hmm, seems there much to catch up on. Bros tbk,how life & naija.pls,where's seun&tolu? To everyone else, e ku ile o!

T-Cann:

It's nice to be back in the house (have I really been out in the real sense like that ?)hmm, seems there much to catch up on. Bros tbk,how life & naija.pls,where's seun&tolu? To everyone else, e ku ile o!

how far? have u left 9ja ?
welcome back sha

It has been super hectic around the office. . . .I will crash the forum if i start recounting events over the last couple of weeks. . .
Anyways how's everyone?
To ya'all who still have a job, thank God. . .
To ya'all who are still looking, keep at it. . . It will happen
And to us all who are looking for bigger challenges, God is with us. . . .
_{Off to work now. . .Catch ya'all}

been walking the streets of lagos,  my new nickname is 'johnny walker'. it's fun, cos my other team members are cool, but very tiring. some of us don dey get blurred vision sef!

i'm 'resting' today sha. means i'm doing paperwork and NLwork, and pretending to be very busy :p

meanwhile, what gives some people the right to toast u sake of say u dey find info? ehn? some others behave like demi-gods because u stopped by to ask a few questions. na wa o! i left the marketing line a long time ago, but i'm more certain than ever that i never want to do marketing again. except for my personal business  even then sef,

@ debosky: thanks for the new word!

@Iceblue
do you work in a bank?
i know diggler work in a bank and i think he survived the 'madness' that followed Sanusis intervention in sector

would really like to hear from bankers on how they survived being sacked and how life is after the downsizing exercise

whats the true position about the cut in salary story? is it really as bad as the papers are making it sound?

hey, if you dont work in a bank then disregard this. I'll probably pose this to Diggler whenever he comes here

cheers

Uninteresting day.
Spent 3hrs playing chess on the PC.

I'm going home now.

tkb417:

@Iceblue
do you work in a bank?

no i don't. doing some research for the comfany

je m'en vais! see y'all tomorrow!

A quite hectic day. Handing over part of my job to another staff, so I took him through some things today. Later went in for a meeting that lasted just 45 minutes.
Then began the regular month-end activities.

BlueDiva:

Uninteresting day.
Spent 3hrs playing chess on the PC.
I'm going home now.

U're living the life! when i grow up i wanna be just like u!

more excel sheet work today, so i wore high heels (i've missed my babies!) COOL! need to come up with some winchy stuff to impress the bosses.

debosky:

Maybe the Minister's girlfriend lives in that Minna location.

Interesting. So you an 'ordinary' graduate can describe just two aspects of the problem so succinctly and a whole minister can't?  I wonder who is advising these big shots. At least if the minister is unaware of the actual issues what are the technical advisers in PHCN or the ministry doing to guide him?  Hope he sees road quickly sha. 

Don't worry, when I build my waste-to-power facility, you'll be my plant manager! 

i'm mega-watt crazy thats the thing(. . .remember this is naija and we're talking about civil servants here, they wont contradict oga. . .the former MD of PHCN told them<minister and yar' adua> that 6000 didn't make sense and he was retired). . .they aren't engineers so they dont understand the fundamentals sha. . .there are far too many people in positions of authority in the power sector that dont know the first thing about power and so when they see all the money available. . .

this is what runs through the average PHCN staff's head wrt the geniuses we always end up getting saddled with. . .
if you speak up against them, they'll say you're a saboteur(the ceo of one of the generation companies said this verbatim to some of us corpers), and its not even as if they pay you well sef so you dont have a nest egg for when they fire you, and besides they are politicians, they'll soon leave and hopefully the next ones will be better.

by the way, in nigeria we've never had an engineer of any sort(not just electrical o!) as minister of power, we've had lawyers, french graduates, economists as minister but no engineers.

and another thing, which other ministry can boast of having two past ministers as governors? i mean, we're just generous like that, we provided the funds for agagu and imoke to run for office, who says we aren't doing anything in nigeria?

@thread
i'm in jebba dam now, and the place fine small o, but their security isn't anything to write home about, we should thank God we dont have homegrown terrorists. . .

What's up peoples,

iceblue:

more excel sheet work today, so i wore high heels (i've missed my babies!) COOL! need to come up with some winchy stuff to impress the bosses.

excel sheets and high heels? What exactly am I missing here?

netotse:

by the way, in nigeria we've never had an engineer of any sort(not just electrical o!) as minister of power, we've had lawyers, french graduates, economists as minister but no engineers.

Rilwan has a Phd in Energy Economics. That should enable him come up with something at least. He's an energy professional, and should not need to be an engineer. At least that's how it works in more advanced climes.

@Topic,
Today is low, as it has been since I got back to work. And I have at least six weeks before I get on the road again. Looking forward to being bored out of my kazoo. Today I'm working on a presentation to my team, in which I aim to give them a bunch of bad news. No raises, no bonuses and no cute perks this year.

iceblue:

U're living the life! when i grow up i wanna be just like u!

more excel sheet work today, so i wore high heels (i've missed my babies!) COOL! need to come up with some winchy stuff to impress the bosses.

AjanleKoko:

What's up peoples,

excel sheets and high heels? What exactly am I missing here?

read my earlier posts. been burning up the kilometers on foot. of course i can't do that in heels. so today and yesterday i had some office work to do, and i pulled out my heels, which i've missed! comprende?

sorry abt ur people o! we're in a recession e go beta.

^^ ah, my bad!
Enjoy the heels . . . e go beta!

nice thread. I hope I am welcome to this office

Dr Ferlie:

nice thread. I hope I am welcome to this office

ol boi long time no see
where have u been?

oil rigs again?
lol, ure welcome here jare ma guy

Yesterday and today were something else for me.

Honestly I don't think I'll miss this carbon trading duties when I pass them on in September - too many people involved looking out for their own interests and sabotaging your good work.

Had to hit the boss with the bad news yesterday - budget was going over by over 10 times my annual salary (oya begin guessing ) because of some data conversion errors. This was after just a week ago we thought we didn't need any new budget allocation. Needless to say I was gutted, and the poor boss felt even worse. I hope they don't slash bonuses because of this - another case of 'oversabi' discovering of problems.

Honestly I'm just going to do as I'm told from now on - no more using 'initiative' if it only uncovers problems.

Managed to snatch some victory from the jaws of defeat today - discovered another error which would reduce the budget overrun by 100k. That at least put a smile on the the boss' face.

Saving that kind of money should get my face in the next company magazine jo - if people saving 10k got in I should be on the cover sef.

Not a bad week's work - managed to get a medium risk score for explosive hazards. . . .that should get me a flight to HQ late rin the month.

TGIF - I shall sleep to my hearts content.

AjanleKoko:

Rilwan has a Phd in Energy Economics. That should enable him come up with something at least. He's an energy professional, and should not need to be an engineer. At least that's how it works in more advanced climes.

An analysis of the problems facing NEPA should guide the selection of the candidate. NEPA is a monopoly that faces an almost perfectly inelastic demand. Its problems are more on the technical side at all phases of the network.
Energy economics is a sub-discipline of economics and it does not qualify the individual to solve the technical problems of NEPA. It is more suited to some one heading a functional energy provider in a competitive market.
A better candidate for NEPA would be an electrical engineer with sound management skills and experience.

biina:

An analysis of the problems facing NEPA should guide the selection of the candidate. NEPA is a monopoly that faces an almost perfectly inelastic demand. Its problems are more on the technical side at all phases of the network.
Energy economics is a sub-discipline of economics and it does not qualify the individual to solve the technical problems of NEPA. It is more suited to some one heading a functional energy provider in a competitive market.
A better candidate for NEPA would be an electrical engineer with sound management skills and experience.

isnt the DG of Power supposed to be the technical man with the Minister only overseeing the affairs

i dont think the MD of a bank will know about all the networking and systems engineering angle of his banks business

if the DG is excellent, it will make the supervisory role of the MD;s job easier
thts me opinion tho

Nice one there debo
when the bonuses start flying
remember ur hommies at home

tkb417:

[/b]
isnt the DG of Power supposed to be the technical man with the Minister only overseeing the affairs

i dont think the MD of a bank will know about all the networking and systems engineering angle of his banks business

if the DG is excellent, it will make the supervisory role of the MD;s job easier
thts me opinion tho

IT systems are not the banks core business and thus the MD of a bank can afford a big level of abstraction, but the MD needs to know his onions when it comes to banking. The lack of knowledge of basic engineering principles is why Bola Ige as minister for power was talking about the amount of power NEPA generated per day

How much abstraction you can afford at the ministerial level would depend on the challenges being faced. One can easily follow your line of argument down the organization and keep on passing down the responsibility. At some point, someone needs to know the core business and what they are doing. I think it should be as high up the ladder as possible. I disagree with having ministers that do not know what they are managing, and have to get advisers, who in turn needs advisers that may also need advisers, all simply because the minister is clueless. Moreso, we have tried other fields with no success, and are yet to try the sole one associated with the core business.

If a person is unqualified, competency is no longer an option.

Biina
i agre wholeheartedly with you. . . .
my concerns. . .

do we have technocrats in that sector as politicians? Even if we have some that are engineers, are they active politicians in their constituency and parties to the extent they can taken as a Federal minister?

i dont know how logical it sounds to use Engr. Makoju as the minister of Power because of his know-how and not because of his active status in PDP. will our political machinery allows such system to work? i dont think so hence the reason for the DG to be the man in charge

However, these ministers are supposed to have advisers who are knowledgeable in the field to pass across the ministers/Presidencys vision to the DG. Your abstraction theory can only work in a totalitarian government where the president or the prime minister wields power with reckless abandon. Democracy has got some price to pay especially in a 3rd world country like ours where the best brains are not particularly partisan politicians. Our problems lie with Governments insincerity in implementing their vision for the sector. This is not about ministerial irresponsibilities. The executive inertia in this country is so ridiculous u begin to wonder if we're destined never to fulfil our political manifestoes
lets pray Biina, no be abstraction be this, na just plain wickedness

tkb417:

[/b]
isnt the DG of Power supposed to be the technical man with the Minister only overseeing the affairs

i dont think the MD of a bank will know about all the networking and systems engineering angle of his banks business

if the DG is excellent, it will make the supervisory role of the MD;s job easier
thts me opinion tho

they should try appointing a french graduate as minister for finance now. . .or an engineer as minister for health. . .(i swear if that happens i'm abandoning my nigerian passport!). . .also when the contracts are awarded by non-engineers, its only natural that quality of work takes a backseat.

i must say that there a a lot of people in PHCN that have no business being there but to say that is why the nigerian power sector is not functioning is a blatant lie, even ghana told us what our problem is, we're mix politics and power(electrical) together. . .

AjanleKoko:


Rilwan has a Phd in Energy Economics. That should enable him come up with something at least. He's an energy professional, and should not need to be an engineer. At least that's how it works in more advanced climes.

_{lol. . .deja vu,during my I.T. i asked the current CEO of TCN(then he was head system operations) what he though i should do as a PG and he said energy economics!}


the guy has read a lot of reports, that doesn't make him a professional, i know this is simplifying it drastically, but all energy economics is about is basically the how to get the maximum value for your money in the power system, but that pre-supposes that the said power system is actually functioning. . .you should see some of the gaffes this guy makes on even on TV, but then since in naija everybody but the engineers is qualified to talk about the sector(i remember achike udenwa saying 6000MW will give industries 24/7 electricity) i guess anything goes. . .

having technical advisers will only work if they're willing to contradict you(which would require you listening to them in the first place, which sadly is not what obtains here)

the only way i would believe anything i hear on TV about the power sector is if it's said by someone on the field not all these desk warriors(notice how it was only politicians and political appointees that were mouthing off about 6000MW?) not ONE technical person in PHCN believed the 6000MW dream and the sad thing is that nigerians fell for it hook, line and sinker.

tkb417:

ol boi long time no see
where have u been?
oil rigs again?
lol, ure welcome here jare ma guy

tkb417, how you dey jare? long time indeed!!! I have been Drilling Well On Paper since .


Debosky

@ OGA DR FERLIE !! nice to read your post ,long time how is the well doing,u ve succeeded in transfering the well into paper, hopes it hits pay zone 

All,

This issue of technocrats in politics turns me nuts

What have the technocrats who had no previous political background done?

Charles Soludo almost ruined the banking industry and has now joined the bandwagon.

Dora, were it not for the sudden change of heart last week had already turned into something else,

'Babalola, the Minister of State for Finance seems hidden from the public view.

Babatunde Omotoba, the Minister of Aviation is a Civil Engineer who had done so well for himself in the private sector.

Odein Ajumogobia, a former attorney general of Rivers State,

I'm so tired of mentioning names,

I'm just trying to make sense of how easy it is for these people to do well in their personal callings and end up turning into something completely different when they get into the corridors of power.
Come to think of it, a fresh graduate who is passionate about the energy sector can define the problems in the energy sector with few lines,

It's so irritating,