President Umaru Yar'Adua on Tuesday ordered a new task force to triple electricity generation capacity within 18 months, an ambitious goal in a country where power generation has stagnated for decades. Most Nigerians have little or no access to mains power and economists say this is one of the biggest obstacles to development. Businesses have to run costly diesel generators almost around the clock if they want to function normally.

President Yar 'Adua

Yar'Adua had promised in his election campaign to declare a national emergency on power, but he has yet to do so since he took office in May last year. Tuesday's statement was his most precise commitment so far on power generation. "Yar'Adua has established a presidential committee for the accelerated expansion of Nigeria's power infrastructure," the president's spokesman said in a statement. "(He) charged the committee with the responsibility of delivering within 18 months 6,000 additional megawatts generation, transmission and distribution capacity," the statement said.

By 2011, the target is an extra 11,000 MW. Nigeria with 140 million people, currently has a generation capacity of about 3,000 MW. South Africa, which has a third of the population, has more than 10 times that capacity. Any administration that delivers more power to the people would be wildly popular. Absence of electricity is the No.1 complaint of most Nigerians, a recent poll found. The committee is expected to submit an interim report within 30 days and its proposals will be a crucial part of the power emergency yet to be declared by Yar'Adua, the statement said.

The announcement comes days after Yar'Adua approved a new blueprint for developing the gas sector which is partly aimed at providing more cheap gas to power stations. The committee's job is to audit power infrastructure, propose a securitisation structure to attract credible private investors, and provide pricing proposals to ensure returns on investment but also affordable tariffs for consumers. Members include the head of the Africa Finance Corporation (AFC), a new development-focused investment bank based in Lagos, and the heads of several industrial groups like the Nigerian arm of ExxonMobil and home-grown conglomerate Dangote.

The AFC, a Nigerian initiative, aims to raise both public and private funds to invest in infrastructure in Africa. It says it has almost $1 billion in capital now, mostly from the Nigerian government. It has yet to start any concrete projects. Nigeria's low power generation is a legacy of decades of corruption and mismanagement under a series of military dictatorships which ended in 1999.

Yar'Adua's predecessor, Olusegun Obasanjo, set a series of targets for increased generation and said his government invested billions of dollars, but nothing changed after spending $16 billion in eight years. The old National Electric Power Authority (NEPA), popularly known as Never Expect Power Always, was renamed the Power Holding Company of Nigeria (PHCN) which Nigerians promptly started calling Problem Has Changed Name.