As everybody and their mother knows, Nigeria turned 50 a couple of weeks ago. Turning 50 is one of those momentous occasions that tends to invite reflection. In Nigeria's case these reflections have tended to either be "laments for the problems" or "odes to the solutions". I decided to stay away from both discussions this time because I tend to find them depressing these days.

Nigeria's problems are obvious, as are the solutions, however its the implementation that is not so obvious. Discussions on implementation are few and far between, and those are the conversations that I tend to be interested in. The What has no power over me these days, it's all about The How?

One area in which The How, has been pretty well established for a while is power. One of the things that most people (myself included) say is that if they had the ability to fix one problem in Nigeria, they would fix power. I believe that power is the limiting factor for growth, and that part of the reason we got into the mess we did in the financial services sector. The lack of power limited the availability of businesses that would be good credits.

The How in power, was established in the mid noughties by a team that then President Obasanjo put together and actually passed into law. The first part of the How was to privatize all the generation and distribution assets, keep the transmission asset but privatize the management of it. The second part of The How, was to liberalize the electricity tariffs and the price of gas (long story but trust me).

However President Obasanjo didn't get this done during his tenure, and the Yar'Adua administration was not really interested in pursuing it. There was also strong, vociferous opposition from the staff unions. So it looked like, after the brief promise of the mid noughties we were doomed to continue at power consumption levels for the foreseeable future.

Flash forward to 2010, and President Jonathan's tenure. He came out saying that he was focused on power. We all nodded and smiled, after all, everyone in the last 10 years has said this. So when he inaugurated his power committee, we nodded and smiled, after all that has also been done. There were rumors that this time it was different, but as such rumors had surfaced before, we paid them little heed.

However on August 26 2010, people stopped nodding and smiling and started paying attention. The President unveiled his power reform plan, and I can say that it is the most holistic approach to the problem that I have seen since I started caring about the power sector in Nigeria. It builds on the act passed by President Obasanjo, with the privatization and the tariffs, and if it is implemented as outlined, then we should start seeing the fruits in about two to three years.

I advise everyone who cares about such things to check out the website for the Power Reform Task force, you can find the road map there amongst other things. If they pull this off, it will be the most significant thing done in Nigeria since the telecoms reforms. You can also tell that they are aware of this. The head of the task force, Prof Bart Nnaji, references telecoms a few times in the interview I have embedded below for your viewing pleasure.




Nigerians tend to have the battered woman syndrome when it comes to power, and these pieces by the FT and Reuters show some hints of that. However, there is reason to believe that the cycle will be broken this time. Don't get me wrong, it is still too early to begin dancing in the streets about the power situation, but we have definitely crossed over to the "watch this space" segment of the evening. Here's to hoping, that in a few years we will need to find another "One Thing" that has to be done to change Nigeria for the better.

I will say with no shame that When Harry Met Sally is one of my all time favorite movies. I mean it is even on my never been updated blogger profile. One of the standard theories of that movie is that men and women can't be friends, the reason being my title. While WHMS is the seminal exponent of this theory, almost every single Hollywood movie in existence operates on this central premise.

I came across a Slate series on platonic friends that shows that most of the readers of the site also believe the Hollywood theory. The platonic friends debate is one that I was sure I had opined on before and a quick look through my back issues proved me right.

Sadly I have realized that I did a damn good job writing on it the last time, and that I probably couldn't do better this time around. Clearly I'm a worse writer. Anyway, based on an old 2008 post, I can categorically state that I believe that men and women can be friends subject to a pretty significant caveat. The post is called The Age Old Question and the caveat (for those of you too lazy to click through) was that men and women can only be friends once the sex stuff has been dealt with.

To my slight shame, checking also revealed that I also expressed an opinion on platonic friends in an early piece written in 2007 called These Girls Sef. Now this piece also proves that I pretty much believed the same thing, though the less said about my beliefs about the role of female friends the better. I can positively say that those views have changed...somewhat.

I suppose it is kinda annoying to be prompted by an article to write something, only to realize that this has happened before, but I guess I can't really turn away any promptings to blog in these blogging starved days. The only thing I would add to the posts, is that there is also an ethical component to dealing with the sex thing. Basically I'm saying that sometimes you deal with the sex thing by realizing that there are sensible reasons why you can't be together: other relationships, close exes, work, religion, etc... The older you get, the more important these other reasons become.

So what do my last two readers think? Can platonic friends happen without dealing with the sex stuff?