The
Nigeria Union of Electricity Employees, NUEE on Thursday identified inadequate
supply of gas requested for the suboptimal performance of thermal plants in the
country as a mojor issue associated with
poor power supply nationwide. It then
tasked the federal government to fish out sponsors and those behind the
vandalism of pipelines.
General Secretary of
the union, Comrade Joe Ajaero, who is also a factional President of the Nigeria
Labour Congress, NLC, made this call at the third Triennial Conference held at
Wallan Hotel, Ibadan.
According to him, “30
years ago till now we are still talking about vandals and no solutions to it.
Who are those people breaking pipelines?, and when they do the government will
award contract for it to be fixed again. Why can’t government identify who is
breaking it and how much is been used to repair it again?
“Let government come
out to tell us how much they are using to repair broken pipelines and who are
the sponsors of pipeline vandalism? When these questions are answered then
there will be solution to it. Nigeria is one of the countries that is suffering
from power poverty because the international best practice is that for where
you have one million you must have 1,000 Megawatts, but here we have 3,000
Megawatts for 170 million people.”
The NUEE boss said he
has great respect for President Muhammadu Buhari and believes he will not play
politics with the power situation in the country.
He, however, described
the promise by President Buhari to generate 10,000 Megawatts of electricity
generation as unrealistic as he asked: “Does he take 10,000 Megawatts as a
figure or it was base on what was on ground?, because the gestation period for
any power plant is between three to four years and if they have not started
building anyone now, how will that be possible?
Ajaero continued: “I
have not seen construction of power plants to the tune of 10,000 Megawatts,
even if it is been built I have not see the transmission network and half of
the transformer are bad presently.
“I have once
challenged the Minister for Information, Lai Mohammed to a debate as the
spokesperson of the government to address Nigerians on how why we are not
having power and how they aim to solve power problem in the country. We need to
know their policy base on power, because Nigerians needs to know how the
government intends to resolve the problem.”
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