Power sector privatisation has failed – Lawan

Senate President Ahmad Lawan yesterday faulted the signing of the 2013 agreement on the privatisation of the power sector.

He said contrary to Nigerians’ expectation, the privatisation had not yielded desired results in the sector.

• Power privatisation failed Nigerians – Senate
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He spoke in Abuja yesterday during a public hearing themed “Power Sector Recovery Plan and the Impact of COVID-19 Pandemic”, by the Senate Committee on Power.

“How did they sign the agreement, not under duress, not with gun on our head, for this kind of huge amount of money when we know you’re not prepared to take the required generation?

We shouldn’t have signed it since we didn’t have the capacity, now we are made to cough out N14b monthly, for what?

“Ministry of Finance and the Central Bank will be running from pillar to post to raise the money for work not done and yet there are problems we face every day because we’re not able to give our security agencies the kind of weaponry that they need, no manpower, 14m children out of school and then some people are busy collecting this amount of money.”

Lawan charged the committee to investigate what happened to the power purchase agreement. He said, “When you have privatization, you have Share Purchase Agreement. This investigation should look at what has happened.

“What are the responsibilities and the obligations of the Federal government in the Share Purchase Agreement? What is BPE supposed to do.

“And equally and very important, what are the successful investors who are given 11 DISCOs and 6 GENCOs supposed to do and within which time framework.

“Government should not be given free money. N1.8trn has been given to DISCOs maybe in their books. The actual money might have been given to the GENCOs.

“N1.8trn is a huge amount of money. Is it part of the Share Purchase Agreement that we should be given this kind of money or what are we supposed to do as a government? What is our obligation?”