Senate President Bukola Saraki on Tuesday criticised how the power sector was privatised, saying it was sold to individuals who had no idea about how to run it.
He said the mistakes of past governments “born out of ignorance, selfish interests and fraud”, brought Nigeria to this point.
Saraki said this at a workshop on power sector organised by the national assembly in Abuja.
He lamented that the sector, in spite of the enormous resources committed to it for the last 14 years, had remained in a perilous state.
“Today, we are on the verge of a total systemic breakdown and I see this as an opportunity to stop this train from derailing completely,” he said.
“We sold the discos to individuals and parties who had no idea about running a proper power distribution business. Licenses were issues based on cronyism rather than capital adequacy, market experience and capacity to deliver. Agreements were faulty and transaction integrity hardly imperative.
“This is the opportunity for both the legislature and executive to come together to forge a solution to this perennial problem. We cannot afford to waste the opportunity we have now.
“We owe it to the people who have entrusted us with the privilege of working out solutions to their problems by electing us to our various offices that we are hard on our heels to bring them solutions not complaints.
“We cannot shy away from the fact that inexcusable mistakes have been made in the past that brought us to this point and we must be willing to face up to them and clearly delineate them in order to ensure that we do not return to the mistakes of the past.
“Clearly some of these where innocent mistakes, others were rather the product of selfish interests, some fraudulent, some borne out of ignorance and others glaring lack of capacity apparent from day one. All of these combined has brought us to the mess we now have to face up to.”
Emphasising that the problems in the sector were the country’s own making, the senate president said sacrifice must be made to overcome the challenges.
“Where we are is not an accident. We walked our way into the landmine we are facing with the decisions we made in the past. While privatisation is a right policy recipe to pursue in order to put in place a power sector that can galvanise our economy, we forgot that the participation of the private sector is not an end in itself,” he said.
“We neglected that unless this is done, observing transparency, competition, transaction integrity we might end up with a sector worse than the past. The BPE did things that were inexcusable. To imagine that even the sale proceeds of about $4bn was solely spent towards the payment of pensions and staff. Not one single kobo was expended towards catalysing the sector back to life.
“GENCOS bought generating units without a clear assurance of source of gas to fire plants and government had no active roadmap for delivery of a gas market infrastructure to make this happen.
“Yet gas companies and the IOCs were exporting our gas out of our shores to create gas markets elsewhere in Europe and Asia while we languished in darkness as a result of incessant, persistent and erratic power outages. In the face of all these our people continued to be called upon to bear inexplicable bills estimated beyond rationale service value.”

https://www.today.ng/business/energy/256380/clueless-investors-bought-nigerias-power-sector-saraki

What's this man saying? Is it discos that blew up gas pipelines delivering gas to power plants? Why can't people say the truth in their life? The power plants are down because they don't have gas and if no power is generated,how does he expect them to deliver electricity to homes? He should hold the senators from the Niger Delta responsible for not doing enough to stop bombing of gas pipelines in their constituencies.
For the past few months, I am yet to finish the Kilowatts of electricity I loaded on my meter because there's hardly light and I wonder how the discos manage to survive when we their customers have not recharged for months yet someone is still blaming them?
It's not their fault and as a matter of fact,they're more of victims of intense political power play. I support the government's move to move over to hydro power generation since the gas power plant is at the mercy of the miscreants that called themselves militants

When will all these complains end

Senate President Bukola Saraki on Tuesday criticised how the power sector was privatised, saying it was sold to individuals who had no idea about how to run it.
He said the mistakes of past governments “born out of ignorance, selfish interests and fraud”, brought Nigeria to this point.

Past government, that he was one of them,these people don't have shame

Clueless investors under clueless government led by clueless president.

We are watching how much or better clueless this PMB administration will amount on or before its four- year term.

Businessideas:
What's this man saying? Is it discos that blew up gas pipelines delivering gas to power plants? Why can't people say the truth in their life? The power plants are down because they don't have gas and if no power is generated,how does he expect them to deliver electricity to homes? He should hold the senators from the Niger Delta responsible for not doing enough to stop bombing of gas pipelines in their constituencies.
For the past few months, I am yet to finish the Kilowatts of electricity I loaded on my meter because there's hardly light and I wonder how the discos manage to survive when we their customers have not recharged for months yet someone is still blaming them?
It's not their fault and as a matter of fact,they're more of victims of intense political power play. I support the government's move to move over to hydro power generation since the gas power plant is at the mercy of the miscreants that called themselves militants

You are right bro and Saraki is also right, Disco have been defaulting from paying for the power they purchase from TCN and whenever Power generation goes above 3500MW they will start rejecting loads, the reason is that they have not improve on bill collection, hence, they can't afford to pay for power generated by Gencos in excess of 3500MW, some of this discos lose as much as 40% in expected revenue on their output.

TCN bought by a Canadian firm is clueless

Wea those peepz dat called it the most transparent privatization process??

Tho twas transparent sha

U mean like Atiku Abubarka?

Businessideas:
What's this man saying? Is it discos that blew up gas pipelines delivering gas to power plants? Why can't people say the truth in their life? The power plants are down because they don't have gas and if no power is generated,how does he expect them to deliver electricity to homes? He should hold the senators from the Niger Delta responsible for not doing enough to stop bombing of gas pipelines in their constituencies.
For the past few months, I am yet to finish the Kilowatts of electricity I loaded on my meter because there's hardly light and I wonder how the discos manage to survive when we their customers have not recharged for months yet someone is still blaming them?
It's not their fault and as a matter of fact,they're more of victims of intense political power play. I support the government's move to move over to hydro power generation since the gas power plant is at the mercy of the miscreants that called themselves militants

Guy, you must be in the minority. Under which DISCO does your premises fall? It cannot be Eko Disco, because those people will do anything to make your credit on the meter finish, as fast as possible. For those with defective meters, Eko Disco has specialised in dishing out estimated bills that do not bear any correlation with the amount of kilowatt you have consumed.

They have refused totally to fix faulty pre-paid meters. And they always give fake excuses to those who want to buy new ones. That estimated bill business, pays off for them - big time! So they are really making money!

Clueless politicians bought Nigerian Government

Dumb Jonathan sold Nigerian power assets to traders.
Complete local, parochial idiot.wiyjout strategic ability.
Yet people continue to tell lies crediting him with qualities the guy has not even heard of not to talk of possessing. At least in Obj time, privatization was done with some technical depth and process audited by credible international Consultants.

The FG may need to revoke these ownerships even if they are going to be costly. Alternatively, arm twist them to go down into technical partnerships with utility companies overseas.

f

.

K

Sold to them by a clueless president. Unfortunately, the incumbent president is the most clueless leader I have ever seen

nawa oh

When your president is clueless, what do u expect

One of the key problems today is that politics is such a disgrace, good people don't go into government.

..

So Nebo is clueless, saraki you're mad

But you were part of the last administration

Can you guys buy the sector back? Abeg bring back NEPA. ..I still shout up Nepa

Any one more clueless than the senates?

Ha

Were you not part of the Govt that sold to the clueless investors ?

Were u not a governor back then y didn't u speak up




Saraki be warned

more clueless are the people that sold it to them,knowing well that the investors are clueless and yet have nothing to do about it.