NLC: Only 150,000 MW Can Guarantee 150m Nigerians Access To Reliable Power

The Nigeria Labour Congress,NLC, has tackled the country’s Minister of Power, Chief Adebayo Adelabu over his recent claim that 150 million Nigerians now enjoy adequate electricity with 5,500MW.

Its President,Joe Ajaero, who said this in a statement on Wednesday, maintained that Nigeria should be generating no less than 150,000MW to justify such a claim. 

He told the  Minister of Power, Nigerians are tired of propaganda and statistical gymnastics, stressing that Adelabu should stop insulting the intelligence of the people with fabrications and false hope. 

He added:”If you generate, transmit and distribute more power, we will see it in our homes and factories; not on the pages of newspaper and on television.”

He said for the Minister to suggest that over 150 million Nigerians have access to reliable power in a country that struggles to generate a meager and inconsistent 5,000 megawatts—far below the global benchmark of 1,000MW per one million people—is to insult the intelligence and lived realities of Nigerians.

The country’s electricity generation on its best day,he said, has never exceeded 5,500MW.

He added:”We want to ask; Is Nigeria’s standard different from world standard? Where are the power plants that make this level of supply possible? Where is the upgraded transmission infrastructure to support such output? Why are our homes still shrouded in darkness and our factories shutting down daily?

“This is not how performance is measured but could be likened to a joke carried too far. The truth is that millions of Nigerians, from urban slums to rural communities, continue to live without access to electricity. The few who have access do so under constant threat of disconnection, blackouts, and financial exploitation through a complex pyramid of inflated tariffs and arbitrary billing”

He blamed the current crisis on the 2013 power sector privatization,which handed over the nation’s critical infrastructure to cronies for just N400 billion. 

He lamented that after over 12 years of privatization; the power sector has neither experienced any significant capacity expansion nor gained substantial infrastructure renewal despite trillions spent.

 He also complained that there has been no sanction for incompetent power distribution and generation companies as outlined in the privatization agreement because the buyers seem to be the same as the sellers.

Puncturing Federal Government moves to sell off the Transmission Company of Nigeria (TCN),Ajaero submitted that the development is an attempt to swallow the remaining power asset by the ruling elite at the detriment of the suffering Nigerian masses.

He said the the privatization of the TCN will suffer same fate as the earlier privatized entities of the defunct Power Holding Company of Nigeria 

 He also faulted the recent electricity tariff hike, saying it’s a sophisticated scheme to legalize exploitation. 

He said,while DISCOs have raked in over N700 billion from helpless consumers, power supply remains epileptic, erratic, and inaccessible to the majority. 

Millions of Nigerians,he lamented, are now forced to choose between food and electricity bills. 

He added:”It is apparent that those who preside over the helms of affairs have either lost their sense of humanity or do not entirely care about the consequences of their actions on the masses who are undergoing the most severe hardship in our history as a nation.

“Meanwhile, workers in the power sector, who continue to hold the crumbling system together, remain poorly paid and grossly undervalued, while top NERC officials and private sector profiteers enrich themselves in a festival of regulatory impunity. This is most unacceptable and all patriots must speak up against this apparent insensitivity and grandstanding in the name of governance.

“The Nigeria Labour Congress will not fold its arms while Nigerians are exploited by economic fat cats. We are prepared to deploy all democratic and lawful means to continue to expose and resist all grand deception targeted at the Nigerian masses. We will continue in our quest to restore equity and reclaim the power sector for the Nigerian people. “