Prominent Civil Rights Advocacy group: HUMAN RIGHTS WRITERS ASSOCIATION OF NIGERIA (HURIWA) has described as wicked, insensitive, callous, the statement credited to the power minister that Nigeria will be in darkness for three months or in the next three months except Nigerians accept increased light TARIFFS just as the Rights group described the statement as a political blackmail laced with toxicity and is capable of destabilising the administration of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu. HURIWA is asking President Bola Ahmed Tinubu to dismiss the power minister because his most recent statement is an act of active political sabotage against constitutional democracy.
“We advise President Bola Ahmed Tinubu to dismiss his incompetent power minister before he attracts the angst and wrath of the masses by threatening and blackmailing the poor masses who are in their millions that the government will throw the country into a three months light out except the people of Nigeria accepts the IMF and World bank’s externally induced capitalist call for stringent electricity tariffs even when over 56% of Nigerian households pay bills dubiously to the various dubious DISCOS even when these households spend half of the entire months in total darkness”.
“The people of Nigeria will be pushed to the walls of government callousness and wickedness if the government makes good the current threat by Tinubu’s power minister to cut off power supply for three months or cut off power in the next three months as the case may be if tariffs raise aren’t allowed by the people. Let the President know that his power minister is the enemy of democracy and the World should hold him responsible should anything untoward happen in Nigeria that may instigate the revolts of the oppressed masses of Nigeria that may undermine democracy. The best thing is for President Tinubu’s administration to ease the poorly performing power minister out of public office because he is not serving public interest but the business interests of IMF, WORLD BANKS and some billionaires who hijacked the distribution companies in the highly corrupt electricity power sector.”
HURIWA recalled that the Minister of Power, Adebayo Adelabu, despite facing several backlashes over the increase in electricity tariff in the country, has warned that there would be a total blackout in the country in the next three months if the proposed electricity tariff hike is not implemented.
The minister gave the warning in Abuja when he appeared before the Senate Committee on Power at an investigative hearing over the recent electricity tariff hike by the Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission (NERC) on Monday.
Adelabu said, “The entire sector will be grounded if we don’t increase the tariff. With what we have now in the next three months, the entire country will be in darkness if we don’t increase tariffs. The increment will catapult us to the next level. We are also Nigerians, we are also feeling the impact.”
He said the sum of $10 billion is needed yearly for the next ten years to revive the nation’s power sector and nip in the bud the challenges bedevilling it.
“For this sector to be revived, the government needs to spend nothing less than 10 billion dollars annually in the next 10 years.”
He further explained, “This is because of the infrastructure requirement for the stability of the sector. But the government cannot afford that. And so we must make this sector attractive to investors and to lenders.
So, for us to attract investors and investment, we must make the sector attractive, and the only way it can be made attractive is that there must be commercial pricing.
“If the value is still at N66 and the government is not paying subsidy, the investors will not come. But now that we have increased the tariff for A Band, there are interests being shown by investors.”
Adelabu said the inability of the government to pay outstanding N2.9 trillion subsidy was due to limited resources, hence the need to evolve measures to sustain the sector.
Reacting, HURIWA said only a very insensitive public office holders will be canvassing for upward review of service charges in the contemporary Nigerian epoch when the extremely suffocating costs of living are driving many Nigerians to their early graves and this mi sister must know that a man who is already impoverished by the wicked policies of the government fears no fall and will fight by all means to remain alive and this may induce mass anger and revolts on a very wider scale.
“We urge Nigerians to wake up, smell the coffee and fight for their survival or else millions of more families other than the 133 million Households that are already absolutely poor, will become absolutely impoverished and at the verge of existential extinction.”