Minister of Power, Works and Housing, Babatunde
Fashola has claimed that the immediate past President, Goodluck Jonathan
reversed electricity tariff to get votes from Nigerians during the 2015
Presidential elections.
Speaking at a public lecture organised
by the department of Economics, University of Lagos, on Thursday, the
former governor of the state insisted that the privatization of the
power sector was deceptive.
Fashola maintained that the reduction
of electricity tariff by the past administration created “massive debt”
for Nigeria as it did not conform to the realities of the country’s
economy.
He said, “While I fully support privatisation, I believe
what took place in 2013 in the heat of politics was a privatisation
that was well intentioned since 2005 but delivered with some deception
in 2013 with the expectation of political profit.
“It led many
uninformed Nigerians to believe that once the privatisation was
concluded, the assets sold to the distribution companies (DisCos) and
the Generation companies (GenCos) there was immediately going to be
power. I cautioned then that people’s expectations were being unduly
raised without telling them that there was a lot of work to do.
“Government
must also not interfere with the power of the regulator when it fixes
tariff in the way the last administration ordered a reversal of tariff
in order to win electoral votes in 2014.
“It created a massive
debt for Nigeria, because while the government ordered a reversal of
tariff, it did not reduce exchange rate, interest rate, cost of wages or
cost of gas and other inputs necessary to produce power. Why should
Nigeria carry a debt created by an individual’s electoral ambition? This
is what the Buhari administration has to contend with.”
