Lack Of Electricity Brings 'Curse' On Nigerians, Says Adebutu

ABEOKUTA - The Peoples Democratic Party leader in Ogun State, Hon. Oladipupo Adebutu has described as a curse, lack of electricity in the country.

Adebutu stated this on Tuesday at the 3rd symposium organized Ladi Adebutu Good Governance at Ota, Ogun state.

The former House of Representatives member said "The lack of electricity brings on us a curse. It brings on us the curse of expensive generators, this curse takes money out of every pocket in Nigeria. Even the perpetrators of this folly pay for it, we all pay for expensive diesel."

Adebutu called on the state government to parallel generation, transmission facilities, distribution facilities in order to create a conducive environment for industries, which according to him, are relocating from Ogun industrial hub due to lack of power supply and road infrastructure.

He said "The states are allowed and truly enabled to build parallel generating facilities, transmission facilities, distribution facilities. What the constitution says is 'don't carry electricity to another state's. Why are we for God's sake, in a God blessed Ogun state have we not created a parallel electricity system? Why are we waiting for Federal transmission systems, Federal generating systems?

"We should create competition for them, let us allow investment from outside, let us allow competition for them from outside."

Speaking earlier, the Executive Director for Research and Advocacy of the Association of Nigerian Electricity Distributors (ANED), Barrister Sunday Oduntan disclosed that Nigerians spend about N12 Trillion on self power generation annually.

Oduntan also revealed that Nigerian homes and businesses produce 40,000 megawatts of electricity with diesel and petrol per annum.

Delivering a paper titled "Power for Sustainable Development in Ogun State," Oduntan, who is also the official spokesperson for the DisCos, noted that self generation is propelled by lower power generation by the country, which requires 40,000MW to guarantee stable electricity.

He identified corruption, increased energy theft, regulatory inconsistency and confusion, liquidity crisis of the power sector, non – cost reflective tariff and limited power generation, as some of the challenges confronting the nation's power sector.

Oduntan also lamented non-payment of debts by the Government's Ministries, Department and Agencies with N203,819bn debts.

Going down memory lane, he noted that "There was no institutional and regulatory framework to govern progress and development in the sector until 2005. This is why the tariff is only recovering about 30% of costs. All these informed part of the reason why NEPA was insolvent, inefficient and underperforming. Between 2012 and 2014, $5 billion dollar was spent on self generation which could have given us an additional 5000 MW additional generation capacity."

Oduntan added that "without resolving the issue of power, Nigeria will remain underdeveloped, with no major industrial or agricultural development. Many Artisans will remain Okada riders without stable electricity. For that to happen, the Political Leadership at the highest level must embrace the change mantra in the power sector by articulating and implementing clear cut programmes and policies that can put the nation first. Nigerians need to be more Honest."

 In their separate remarks, the Chief Executive Officer of Ikeja Electric Plc, Mrs. Folake Soetan and a legal practitioner, Ehi Uwaifoh noted that stable power supply would boost industrialization drive of the state especially in Ota-Agbara industrial hub.

Uwaifoh particularly called on the state government to create a regulation that would allow it establish a mechanism for power generation and distribution in the state, to drive its industrial policy.