The Conference of Nigeria Political Parties, CNPP, has lampooned the Vice President Namadi Sambo over the comment credited to him that the unbundling of the power sector was successful.
According to CNPP, borrowing ace comedian, Chika Okpala alias Zebrudaya’s often used epitaph said Namadi Sambo’s statement is Foul! Foul! Foul!
In the statement signed by Conference of Nigerian Political Parties, National Publicity Secretary, Osita Okechukwu, he said; “(CNPP) is outraged by the statement credited to Vice President, His Excellency, Namadi Sambo to the effect that the unbundling of Power Holding Company of Nigeria (PHCN) was successful. Record shows that one and half years after Federal Government privatized the unbundled assets of the PHCN, the successor companies have not fared better, to say the least service delivery epileptically poor. Reason the opaque nature of the privatisation process, which facilitated the Distribution Companies and Generating Companies ending up in wrong hands was very obvious.”
“To this less than transparent statement from Arc Sambo, outgoing vice president, who as chairman of the National Council on Privatsation (NCP), presided over the privatization of our electricity substructure; permit us to borrow from the comedian Chika Okpala alias Zebrudaya his often used epitaph – Foul! Foul! Foul! Foul! Foul! Foul! In the sense that we are witnesses to how Mr Atedo Peterside, chairman Technical Committee of NCP, shouted to the high heavens when companies which failed woefully the Net Present Value (NPV) threshold assessment of the Technical Committee were corruptly handed over our commonwealth – Electricity Generation and Distribution Assets,” CNPP said.
Adding further, CNPP said the mess which vice president rated successful, was a colossal failure, because today we have less that 2000MW, the lowest electricity output in a decade; since the fraudulent winner companies were unable to meet the original intendment of privatisation; which is the revamping of our electricity substructure.
“We are unhappy that Mr Peterside was vindicated, for six months later most of the companies were unable to pay up their bid price on schedule, and unable to fix the electricity infrastructure, hence came cap-in-hand begging for financial support and today arbitrarily increasing tariff out of the range approved by the Multi Year Tarriff Order of Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission (NERC).
Had Sambo listened to Atedo Peterside and stopped the impunity which governed the unbundling exercise, the issue of loaning or indeed dashing N230billion to Distributing Companies couldn’t have arisen. For by the time we finish borrowing money to revamp the companies and pay severance allowance to PHCN staff, the whole money received as auction fee most have evaporated into thin air.”
Okechukwu also said that regrettably, the outcome is that the Nigerian family is like a family, which out of frustration auctioned their rickety vehicle, only for the buyer to come back requesting for loan from them to fix the vehicle.
As he added further that; “It is our candid view that this is criminal, unjust and a huge land mine for the incoming General Muhammadu Buhari,s (GMB) administration, an administration that will not only inherit an empty treasury, huge severance debt being owed PHCN staff and increase in electricity tariff nationwide on 1st June, 2015. In sum, the CNPP without prejudice to extant laws calls on our president-elect to review, in fact cancel outrightly the failed PHCN unbundling exercise, which was infested with unbridled corruption and stop the 1st June Tariff increase, as none is sustainable.”
