{"id":22976,"date":"2019-12-09T20:52:53","date_gmt":"2019-12-09T19:52:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/?p=22976"},"modified":"2019-12-09T20:52:53","modified_gmt":"2019-12-09T19:52:53","slug":"senate-president-wants-state-of-emergency-declared-in-power-sector","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/?p=22976","title":{"rendered":"Senate President wants state of emergency declared in power sector"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>By <strong>Ezrel Tabiowo<\/strong>, Special Assistant (Press) to President of the Senate<br \/>\nPresident of the Senate, Ahmad Lawan on Monday called on the Executive to, as a matter of urgency, declare a state of emergency in the power sector to overcome the legion of problems stalling steady power supply in Nigeria.<br \/>\nLawan stated this while declaring open a one-day round-table discussion with the theme: \u201cAddressing Nigeria\u2019s Power Problems\u201d organized by the Senate Committee on Power.<br \/>\nThe Senate President said the privatization of the power sector in 2005 and 2013 was a grand scheme conceived with the intention to defraud Nigeria.<br \/>\nHe said, \u201cFor me, if there\u2019s any sector of our economy that is so important and yet so challenged, it is the power sector. I believe that this is a sector that needs a declaration of emergency.<br \/>\n\u201cThis is an opportunity for us in this round-table to exhaustively discuss not only the problems of the power sector in Nigeria, but the solutions and way forward.<br \/>\n\u201cThe truth is that we all know what is wrong. What we really need to do is to have the political will to take on the challenges generally.<br \/>\n\u201cFrom the electricity power reform of 2005 to the privatization of Gencos and Discos and to what is happening today, we know that everything is fraud. If we play the ostrich, in the next ten years we will be talking about the same things.<br \/>\n\u201cI think the time has come for us to have courage. I want to remind us, that we have signed the African Continental Free Trade Agreement. What will give us an edge is to have a competitive environment.<br \/>\n\u201cOur industries and businesses must be able to produce things that can compete favourably with products produced in other countries in Africa. We are not in that position today, and we all know the consequences of that.<br \/>\n\u201cEven our citizens, who have capital, will rather relocate to Ghana, produce whatever they want and bring to Nigeria to sell. Where does that leave our country? No employment opportunities; Nigeria becomes a dumping ground.\u201d<br \/>\nThe Senate President, therefore, called for a review of the privatization exercise undertaken by the Goodluck Jonathan administration which led to a takeover of the power sector by private Generating Companies (Gencos) and Distribution Companies (Discos).<br \/>\nHe added that the National Assembly would make significant contribution to the reform of the power sector through enabling legislation required to turn around the fortunes of power generation and distribution in Nigeria.<br \/>\n\u201cIf we went wrong with our privatization of Gencos and Discos, the time has come to look into it.<br \/>\n\u201cWhatever we have to do to review these things, we should do. We must do it in the interest of the people of this country. We must admit there was something done wrong.<br \/>\n\u201cThis round-table actually is an idea of the Senate, that we should come together to talk among ourselves. Ours is to provide legislative interventions, but we are also part of government.<br \/>\n\u201cTherefore, whatever that is required to support the executive arm of government to turn-around this sector, in fact we are more than prepared to do so through legislation.<br \/>\n\u201cIf we are going to amend the power sector reform, we are prepared to do that, and expeditiously. Tell us where the issues are, because we can\u2019t afford to delay any action to make the power sector of this country perform.<br \/>\n\u201cIn the sixties we were comparing ourselves with Indonesia, Malaysia and the rest, now we started comparing with Ghana, Togo. With all due respect, that tells us we are not making progress where other countries are.\u201d<br \/>\n\u201cThis round-table is an opportunity to come up with measurable roadmaps, because we are not going to leave the implementation to the executive alone. We want to participate in every inch of the way.<br \/>\n\u201cEvery bit of what is to be done; we want to be part of it, so that we can contribute meaningfully to take the power sector to the next level.<br \/>\n\u201cIt is really disheartening that we are still talking about 4,000 megawatts. I don\u2019t understand this. Other countries within Africa are talking of so much, even Ghana is three times better than what we are doing.\u201d<br \/>\nLawan called on the federal government to deploy the political will towards revamping Nigeria\u2019s failing power sector, saying, \u201cWe are yet the largest economy in Africa, for how long can we sustain that position?<br \/>\n\u201cI believe that we have to declare a state of emergency on Power, and courageous decisions must be taken by government\u201d, the Senate President said.<br \/>\nEarlier, the Senate Leader, Yahaya Abdullahi, in his welcome address said the \u201cinteraction was arranged out of the concern of the Senate and National Assembly about the intractable problems that we have been facing in the power sector.\u201d<br \/>\nAccording to Abdullahi, \u201ca lot of resources and human effort have gone into finding solutions to problems that have put this country several decades backwards, particularly because of the issues that have been raised and have undermined the development of power.\u201d<br \/>\nChairman of the Senate Committee on Power, Senator Gabriel Suswam, said, \u201cThere\u2019s no doubting the consequential role which electricity plays in the economic development of countries.<br \/>\nThe lawmaker lamented that Nigeria currently holds the position of being the second country in the world after India, with the highest population in the world without access to electricity.<br \/>\nSuswam identified challenges in the power sector to include: institutional and governance; infrastructural; political; legislative and environmental.<br \/>\n\u201cMost institutions of government saddled with the responsibility of managing the power sector lack the capability and capacity to function effectively\u201d, he said.<br \/>\nThe lawmaker added that there is serious infrastructural deficit in the entire value chain of the power sector, adding that \u201cthis more than any other challenge requires attention.\u201d<br \/>\nAmong representatives from the executive arm of government that attended the round-table organised by the Senate Committee on Power are the Minister of Power, Saleh Mamman and Managing Director, Nigeria Bulk Electricity Trading PLC, Marilyn Amobi.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By Ezrel Tabiowo, Special Assistant (Press) to President of the Senate President of the Senate, Ahmad Lawan on Monday called on the Executive to, as a matter of urgency, declare a state of emergency in the power sector to overcome the legion of problems stalling steady power supply in Nigeria. Lawan stated this while declaring [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":22977,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,7],"tags":[423,142],"class_list":["post-22976","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","category-news","tag-power-sector","tag-senate"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22976","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=22976"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22976\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=22976"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=22976"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=22976"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}