The leader of the Social Democratic Party (SDP) and the party’s presidential candidate in 2023 general election, Prince Adewole Adebayo, has faulted the planned hike in electricity tariff, noting that the Federal Government is playing politics with the sector.
He therefore urged the Federal Government to depoliticise and increased investment in the sector.
He stated that what the government is doing essentially is to try to dwell more on creating an electricity market by trying to follow the example in countries like Chile and other places where electricity is not seen just from the strategic national development point of view; just the way it was reflected in Nigeria’s first national development plan.
He noted that the government is not looking at electricity from the social service point of view, instead the government is looking at the sector like creating a market for products, but lamented that the only problem in that approach is that the product the government is trying to create is a perfect market that does not exist.
“So, it will be good for the government to forget the idea of creating a perfect market. They should try as much as possible to make supply available and it is an engineering question.
“There is no amount of change of language that can run away from the fact that people will know when there is electricity. Remember how we used to talk about generating 5,000 megawatts, now they have changed it. So, it is just a mathematical language. At the end of the day, people will know whether electricity is available, stable and affordable, and it requires a lot of investments and some of the investments have lead time.
“The problem with politics is that the president has only four years and if you have an engineering project that requires 16 years of continuous investment, there is no need lying to the people that you are going to fix it in four years.
“You will see that many people have fallen by the wayside. Bola Ige came and said that in six months, there would be electricity. If you listened to Babatunde Fashola, by now we should be swimming in electrical current. I believe that in his house now, he is probably running on a generator.
“So, what we need to understand is the advice I gave in 2001. I remember in September 2001, I attended the National Council on Power and I advised them to de-politicise power and make it an investment, just like you need to de-politicise health care delivery and things like that, because these things require time and major investment.
“I think the government should do more in terms of investing public money in core areas and the way we have relied too much on the national grid; the engineering requirements of the national grid are too technical for the people in the ministry to manage. So, we should do it the other way round. The grid is cheaper if it works but I think that micro grates and captain systems are more manageable and more reliable,” he stated.
He also called on the government to work on the excessive bureaucracy that is obtainable in the sector.
“I made a huge investment in electricity in my community in Ondo State and I did it through solar. The second phase I tried to engage the government and I made a heavy investment in electrification, using their grid.
“One and a half years later, they are still doing inspections. I have done all the engineering and bought all the equipment. And when you buy all this equipment, everything is donated to the government automatically. So, they need to die down on bureaucracy, and work on the affordability,” he stressed.
Insisting on increased and right investment in the sector, he urged the National Council of State and National Economic Council to join hands with the government to deal with the issue.
He said: “All of them should come together and make the right investment in the right mix of energy sources and we should dwell very delicately when it comes to wheeling power over thousands of kilometres. We don’t have that executive and managerial capacity for someone who is in Ibadan to be relying on power coming from Kainji, or someone who is in Yola expecting power to come all the way from maybe, Afam.
“So, you need to localize it and some of the monkey businesses they are doing with new hydro-powers like some of the ones that are now in controversy in various courts internationally, if the investments had been made in some of these power stations, by now capacity would have gone up and we won’t be having litigations.” (Thisday)