The Deputy Majority Leader of the House of Representatives and former President of Nigeria Union of Petroleum and Natural Gas Workers, NUPENG, Peter Akpatason, has said the government was not serious about solving the country’s electricity supply crisis.
In a chat with Vanguard, Akpatason lamented that the faulty privatisation of the assets of the defunct Power Holding Company of Nigeria, PHCN, worsened the electricity shortage in the country.He said: “The sellers of the assets of the defunct PHCN were the buyers and it ended up people selling to themselves and forcing the government to raise funds for them to fund their businesses.
“Yet, Nigerians are not getting benefits of privatisation as well as the investment that the government made.
“The first thing the nation should do to address the issue of power shortage is to have a strategic plan for increasing the power generation capacity as well as the distributive channels and then secure those channels to make sure that there are no interruptions, man-made interruptions. Unfortunately, I’m not sure that there is any clear master plan for the country at the moment.
“Sometimes ago, we were given the impression that the solution to power supply crisis was the privatisation of the various sectors in the power sector or the assets of defunct PHCN. Unfortunately and I believe very strongly that privatisation was not properly done.