Recently, the out-going minister of power, Professor Chinedu Nebo warned the in-coming administration not to tamper with the privatisation of the power sector.
However, Electricity workers under the aegis of National Union of Electricity Employees, NUEE, have alleged that the privatisation exercise had made electricity generation and consumption in the country ineffective.
The workers insisted that the incoming government should revisit the payment of over N200 billion to the private sector by the government after the privatization exercise.
The executive members of the union, led by the General Secretary and factional President of Nigerian Labour Congress, NLC, Comrade Joe Ajaero, said this in Abuja while conducting journalists round the site of abandoned 60 containers of 52KVA electricity transformers, at Kubwa.
Ajaero said “We want to say, as a union that the sham called privatization should be revisited. If privatization, as we were told, was to bring us heaven-on-earth elderado, and it has not done that, why should we insist on it?.
“Of course, our position as NUEE, has been no to privatization, especially given that we are an underdeveloped economy. It is the function of the state to provide power.
“Even the so called privatization, you can see that even this year alone, between January and now, they have even given the so called private sector over N200 billion. So, why fund them if you say the electricity is in the hands of the private sector? That brings you to the point of the fraud on who owns them.
“Why would you sell your house to somebody and you still give him money to maintain it? So, it’s a fraud.
On the Minsters comments, he said “A minister who inherited about 4000 megawatts and is today, battling with just 2000 and something megawatts, doesn’t have the moral courage to advise incoming government on what to do.
“If he Buhari asks questions for some months, he will now know the direction to move.”