Minister of Power, Works and Housing, Babatunde Fashola has claimed
that the immediate past President, Goodluck Jonathan reversed
electricity tariff to get votes from Nigerians during the 2015
Presidential elections.
Speaking at a public lecture organised by the department of
Economics, University of Lagos, on Thursday, the former governor of the
state insisted that the privatization of the power sector was deceptive.
Fashola maintained that the reduction of electricity tariff by the
past administration created “massive debt” for Nigeria as it did not
conform to the realities of the country’s economy.
He said, “While I fully support privatisation, I believe what took
place in 2013 in the heat of politics was a privatisation that was well
intentioned since 2005 but delivered with some deception in 2013 with
the expectation of political profit.
“It led many uninformed Nigerians to believe that once the
privatisation was concluded, the assets sold to the distribution
companies (DisCos) and the Generation companies (GenCos) there was
immediately going to be power. I cautioned then that people’s
expectations were being unduly raised without telling them that there
was a lot of work to do.
“Government must also not interfere with the power of the regulator
when it fixes tariff in the way the last administration ordered a
reversal of tariff in order to win electoral votes in 2014.
“It created a massive debt for Nigeria, because while the government
ordered a reversal of tariff, it did not reduce exchange rate, interest
rate, cost of wages or cost of gas and other inputs necessary to produce
power. Why should Nigeria carry a debt created by an individual’s
electoral ambition? This is what the Buhari administration has to
contend with.”
0 Comments