POOR ELECTRICITY? Peter Obi Tells Tinubu Govt What To Do About National Grid Collapse
The presidential candidate of the Labour Party (LP) in the 2023 general elections, Peter Obi, has said the incessant collapse of the national grid will continue to hinder the growth of the economy of Nigeria.
Obi called on the federal government to constitute a technical task force of professionals to address the reoccurring national grid collapse.
It would be recalled that on April 15, the national power grid experienced another collapse, leading to a nationwide blackout, which is the third time in 2024.
Meanwhile, TCN said it had fully restored the national grid and blamed the collapse on a fire incident at the Afam power generating station.
In a statement on Wednesday signed by the spokesman of his Presidential Campaign Organisation, Yunusa Tanko, Obi clarified that the technical task force should consist of real professionals, not politicians.
He said the task force would correct simple slippages, such as incessant fire outbreaks that lead to perennial system collapse, which will rapidly improve power availability in the short term.
He said: “They will get to work to correct simple slippages like incessant fire outbreaks that lead to perennial system collapse and drastically improve coordination and coherence between Transmission Company of Nigeria (TCN) and distribution companies (DisCos).
“There will be no load rejection, and
breath down on all operators to deliver on their technical responsibilities. “This will rapidly improve power availability in the short term while the government develop clarity to articulate an integrated national electricity policy and a practical implementation roadmap that harmonises national and sub-national electricity reform.”
In other news, former Governor Nasir el-Rufai of Kaduna claims that the federal government is spending more on petrol subsidy than before.
President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, in his inauguration speech on May 29, 2023, said “fuel subsidy is gone.” However, speaking with newsmen after delivering the lead paper at a capacity-building workshop, in Maiduguri on Monday, el-Rufai claimed that the government has started paying petrol subsidy.
“The federal government is now subsidizing fuel; many people don’t know this, el-Rufai said.
“It is a right policy. I have always supported the withdrawal of oil subsidy, but in the course of implementing the policy, the government realised that subsidy has to be back; right now, government is spending a lot of money for subsidy, even more than before.
“You start implementing a policy because you are absolutely sure it is the right policy, but in the course of implementation, you come across bottlenecks, and you modify. “The keyword in leadership, in my view, is pragmatism. You should be pragmatic. So when you make a policy, you start implementing it, and it doesn’t seem to work well. You should have the humility to stand back and say this is not working, and you modify it.”
