The new leadership of the Nigeria Labour Congress, NLC, has indicated a willingness to collaborate with the Federal Government to clean up the country’s power system, reiterating organised labor’s call for a review of the privatisation of the electricity sector.
President of NLC, Joe Ajaero, who dropped this hint weekend, contended that everybody, including the federal government, agreed that the privatization process was fraught with corruption.
He said: “The current electricity tariff remains stacked against Nigerian workers and masses and we shall therefore work with government to bring sanity to bear to that sector. We urge the Federal Government again to review the Privatisation of the Electricity sector; a process both the government and all of us have agreed was mired in corruption.
Corroborating Ajaero, immediate past President of NLC, Ayuba Wabba, said: “Investments in Nigeria’s power sector continue to post unsatisfactory outcomes.
”Despite the humungous loss to public coffers occasioned by the under-valued sales of national power assets and the decision of government to still offer bailout funds to private sector investors who claim to possess the needed financial and technical expertise to turn around epileptic public electricity supply in Nigeria, the reward has been a trillion megawatts of darkness.
“We warned government that the power sector privatisation exercise would only be a venture in the despoilation of choice national assets rather than a commitment to improve the lives of ordinary Nigerians.
”Today, we have been proved right as the successor companies that emerged from the defunct Power Holding Company of Nigeria, PHCN, are more interested in stripping Nigerians of their money without rendering commensurate services.”
“We warn the Power Distribution Companies, DISCOs, and the Nigerian Electricity Commission, NERC, to cease and desist from exploiting Nigerians through estimated billings fostered by their failures to provide prepaid meters to Nigerians.”
”We reject the high electricity tariffs arbitrarily imposed on Nigerians. We wish to remind the Federal Government about our agreement on September 28, 2021, to freeze further hike in electricity tariff until some of the issues identified to drive high electricity tariff in Nigeria, including dollarisation of investments in the electricity sector, are addressed.”