The Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) has called for an immediate and comprehensive review of the entire power sector.
President of the NLC, Comrade Joe Ajaero, made the call during the National Union of Electricity Employees’ (NUEE) annual conference of women and youth in Abuja at the weekend.
In 2013, former President Goodluck Jonathan privatised the sector, handing it over to six Generation Companies (GenCos) and 11 Distribution Companies (DisCos).
Comrade Ajaero lamented that over a decade after the much-celebrated privatisation of the power sector, electricity generation remained comically stagnant at between 4,000 and 5,000 Megawatts; the same level as the pre-privatisation era.
He said that this “remains shameful and demonstrates how stagnated our nation has become.”
The NLC president said, “We once again sound the alarm on the deplorable state of the nation’s electricity sector. We declare that the failed privatisation experiment has plunged Nigerian workers, women, youth, and industries into deeper energy poverty as the national grid continues to collapse while DISCOs persistently reject Loads from the Transmission Company.
“Instead of progress, we witness regression. Instead of light, we have darkness. The national grid collapses with the frequency of a faulty generator, sometimes plunging the entire nation into blackout. This is not the ‘turnaround’ we were promised; this is a well-orchestrated robbery of the Nigerian people.”
According to the NLC, the power sector privatisation was a “grand deception.”
The NLC President described the exercise as a fraudulent transfer of public wealth into the hands of a few speculators who lacked both the technical expertise and the financial backbone to manage the nation’s electricity assets.
“The so-called investors did not buy these companies with their own money. No foreign exchange was brought in, though the companies were touted to have come from outside our shores. They borrowed heavily from Nigerian banks, draining domestic credit and contributing to the depreciation of our Naira. They acquired the DISCOs and GENCOs on a shoestring budget and now expect Nigerian workers to pay for their loans through outrageous electricity tariffs,” he said.
Credit: thenationonlineng.net
