•Adebayo and Ajaero
The Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) has described as “a joke too far” the Power Minister, Adebayo Adelabu’s claim that 150 million Nigerians now enjoy “adequate electricity” supply of 5,500 megawatts.
In a statement released by the union’s President, Joe Ajaero, yesterday, the union said the minister’s statement was “outrageous”, reports Channels TV.
The union leader noted that the “Wild assertion is not only pretentious, but also a bad joke on a people daily confronted by grinding darkness, outrageous electricity tariffs, and a power sector manipulated for private profit at the expense of national progress”
“Perhaps, the minister wants to perform Jesus’ miracle of feeding 5,000 persons with 5 loaves of bread and 2 fish.”
According to Ajaero, the minister’s claim was nothing but an attempt to insult the intelligence of Nigerians, given the power challenge the nation faces.
“To suggest that over 150 million Nigerians have access to reliable power in a country that struggles to generate a meagre and inconsistent 5,000 megawatts — far below the global benchmark of 1,000mw per one million people — is to insult the intelligence and lived realities of Nigerians.”
The NLC, which stated that Nigeria should be generating no less than 150,000mw to justify such a claim, noted that “even on its best day, the country’s electricity generation has never exceeded 5,500mw—and that figure remains unstable and unreliable”
“We want to ask, is Nigeria’s standard different from the world standard? Where are the power plants that make this level of supply possible? Where is the upgraded transmission infrastructure to support such output? Why are our homes still shrouded in darkness and our factories shutting down daily?”
The NLC counselled the power minister on standards for measuring performance, adding that the minister’s claim “could be likened to a joke taken too far.
“The truth is that millions of Nigerians, from urban slums to rural communities, continue to live without access to electricity. The few who have access do so under constant threat of disconnection, blackouts, and financial exploitation through a complex pyramid of inflated tariffs and arbitrary billing”.
The NLC traced the current electricity crisis in Nigeria to what it also described as a direct result of the grand betrayal that was the 2013 power sector’s privatisation.
Ajaero accused the federal government of handing over the nation’s critical infrastructure to cronies for just N400 billion, adding that “Over a decade later, there has been no improvement in service delivery. Yet, these same GenCos and DISCOS, which have failed the nation woefully, are to receive over N4 trillion in public subsidies with zero accountability.
“It is disheartening that after over 12 years of privatisation, the power sector has not experienced any significant capacity expansion. No substantial infrastructure renewal despite trillions spent. Unfortunately, and predictably too, there has been no sanction for incompetent DISCOS and GenCos as outlined in the privatisation agreement because the buyers seem to be the same as the sellers.
It claimed that rather than fix the rot in the power sector, the “government now plans to sell off the Transmission Company of Nigeria (TCN)—the last publicly owned component of the power value chain. This move is not reform; it is economic ruse dressed in bureaucratic doublespeak”
“It is an attempt to swallow the remaining power asset by the ruling elite at the detriment of the suffering Nigerian masses. We are worried that the already hijacked entities in the name of privatisation have grossly underperformed, and you want to go the same route with the remaining one – the outcome, of course, will not be different.
The NLC, while also criticising the government over the recent electricity tariff hike, noted that the action masked under the so-called “Band A, B, and C” classification is nothing but a sophisticated scheme to legalise exploitation.
“While DISCOs have raked in over N700 billion from helpless consumers, power supply remains epileptic, erratic, and inaccessible to the majority. Millions of Nigerians are now forced to choose between food and electricity bills.
“It is apparent that those who preside over the helm of affairs have either lost their sense of humanity or do not entirely care about the consequences of their actions on the masses who are undergoing the most severe hardship in our history as a nation.
“Meanwhile, workers in the power sector, who continue to hold the crumbling system together, remain poorly paid and grossly undervalued, while top NERC officials and private sector profiteers enrich themselves in a festival of regulatory impunity. This is most unacceptable, and all patriots must speak up against this apparent insensitivity and grandstanding in the name of governance.
The NLC declared that what is currently going on is not a reform but an organised profiteering.
“Nigerians are tired of propaganda and statistical gymnastics. Cease from insulting the intelligence of the people with fabrications and false hope. Nigerians deserve more respect. If you generate, transmit and distribute more power, we will see it in our homes and factories, not on the pages of newspapers and on television.”
The union vowed that it would not fold its arms while Nigerians are exploited by economic fat cats.
“We are prepared to deploy all democratic and lawful means to continue to expose and resist all grand deception targeted at the Nigerian masses. We will continue in our quest to restore equity and reclaim the power sector for the Nigerian people.”
