- Says tariff will continue to increase as power generation remains at 4000 megawatts
The Power Sector arm of Nigeria’s Organised Labour yesterday raised the alarm that the Federal Government has spent over N1.7trillion on power sector’s privatisation over the last seven years with the Distribution Companies and the Generating Companies as the largest beneficiaries without visible improvement in power generation.
This is even as it slammed President Muhammad Buhari for comparing Nigeria’s pump price of petroleum products with Saudi Arabia and others.
The General Secretary of the National Union of Electricity Employees (NUEE), Mr Joe Ajaero, at a media briefing yesterday in Lagos said with such investment the power generation ought to have tripled to 20,000MWbut have rather remained at 4,000MW, it attained before privatisation.
He warned Nigerians never to believe the government and the investors in the sector that the increase in tariffs would improve power efficiency.
He said, “Increasing tarrif doesn’t mean increasing or improvement in service when power generation remains constant. Seven years after, we are still on 4,000 megawatts, despite rising population. At least they supposed to have been adding 1,000 megawatts every year. It is unfortunate that Nigeria Government privatised at N400 billion and now spent N1.7 trillion supporting DisCos and Gencos investors who have not been able to add anything to the sector. The Federal Government has 40 percent of investment and these investors have 60 percent, but they are not bringing anything and are still calling shots in the sector.”
He said Nigerians should query the Federal Government why the sector’s privatisation has not been reviewed as the law permits the take over by the government with just $1 should the investors fail to develop the sector.
He said the DisCos signed the contract that is dubious, hence they kept charging Nigerians for their inefficiency. “For instance, 90 percent of transformers supplied by the DisCos are overloaded with no relief plan and one of the agreement is to be changing transformers but because they want to maximise profit, they refused to do so”, he said.
Ajaero therefore said privatisation policy is out to destroy the economy of the nation and to milk Nigerians, adding that since the Distribution Companies took over the assets, nothing meaningful has changed in terms of improving on the facilities they met on ground like power plants and turbines.
He noted that what the government has spent in seven years was colossal, while it failed to put money to support the former Nigeria Electricity Company, stating that government only spent N200 billion and Nigerians were better then in terms of service. According to him, it is a fraud for government to charge Nigerians at International rate when the country have sources to generate power from coal, water and even gas which he said unfortunately is being billed in dollars despite being produced locally.
NUEE boss therefore pleaded with Nigerians not to pay for inefficiency of the system. The union also charged government to hand over power sector to them for proper management.
