Conference of Nigerian Political Parties, CNPP, has described as blatant lies the statement credited to the outgoing Vice President Namadi sambo that the unbundling of the Power Holding Company of Nigeria, PHCN, was successful.
Expressing outrage at the statement credited to Sambo, CNPP, in a statement by its National Publicity Secretary, Osita Okechukwu, said that available records show “that one and half years after the Federal Government privatised the unbundled assets of the PHCN, the successor companies have not fared better, to say the least, service delivery has been epileptically poor.”
It said the reason why the opaque nature of the privatisation process, which facilitated the Distribution Companies, DISCOs and Generating Companies, GENCOs, ending up in wrong hands was very obvious.
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Okechukwu said: “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 privatisation of our electricity substructure; permit us to borrow from the comedian, Chika Okpala, alias Zebrudaya, his often used epitaph – Foul! Foul! Foul!
“We are witnesses to how Mr Atedo Peterside, chairman Technical Committee of NCP, shouted to the high heavens when companies which failed woefully in the Net Present Value, NPV, threshold assessment of the Technical Committee were corruptly handed over our commonwealth – Electricity Generation and Distribution Assets.
“To us in the CNPP, the mess which the 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.”
CNPP expressed unhappiness that 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 Tariff Order of Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission, NERC.
It said: “Had Sambo listened to Peterside and stopped the impunity which governed the unbundling exercise, the issue of loaning or indeed dashing N230 billion to DISCOs 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 must have evaporated into thin air,” describing the situation as that of a family, which out of frustration auctioned its rickety vehicle, only for the buyer to come back requesting for loan from it to fix the vehicle.
National Mirror
