Senate President Ahmad Lawan says if nothing is done to address the challenges in the power sector, the 4,000 megawatts the country currently enjoys may “become a challenge”.
Lawan said this on Monday in Abuja at a roundtable entitled: “Addressing Nigeria’s Power Problems.” The event was organised by the senate.
The senate president said the privatisation of the country’s power sector was done fraudulently.
“For me if there is any one single sector of our economy that is important and yet so challenged is the power sector,” he said.
“I believe this is a sector that needs a declaration of emergency. This is an opportunity for us in this roundtable to discuss not only the challenges of the power sector in Nigeria , I think that has been established by the solutions and the way forward.
“The truth is we all know what is wrong. We all know what is wrong , what we really need to do is to have the political will to take on the challenges.
“From the electricity power reform of 2005 to the privatisation of GenCos and DisCos and to what is happening today, we know that everything is fraud and if we play the ostrich, even in the next 10 years [nothing will be done]. I think the time has come for us to have courage.
“We need to revisit the privatisation because apparently there are flaws and that we have to address whether it is at the expense of government or not. We have to get out of this quagmire otherwise we will continue to be complaining and talking about these things until even the 4,000 megawatts we enjoy become a challenge to us.”
Lawan said the federal government needs to declare a state of emergency in the power sector.
On his part, Gabriel Suswam, chairman of the senate power committee, said his panel would probe all those whose decisions impeded the development of the power sector.
“We are going to investigate all people who were involved in certain acts that were inimical to the development of the power sector. You know some of them have been mentioned here,” Suswam said.
