By SUNDAY ABBA, Abuja
The Nigeria Consumer Protection Network, NCPC, a consumer advocacy forum has called on the incoming administration of the President-elect, Senator Bola Ahmed Tinubu, to prioritise energy security for rapid development and Industrialisation.
In a statement issued Wednesday, the President, NCPC, Kunle Kola Olubiyo,
while making the appeal, congratulated the President-elect, the contestants for making the highly competitive, and all Nigerians for a successful presidential and National Assembly elections.
The energy veteran consumer advocate said one of the major priorities of the incoming administration should be energy security in terms access to electricity per capita or availability of affordable and stable energy, adding that energy security is at the heart of food security, job creation, wealth creation, industrialisation, inclusive growth and sustainable development.
According to the group, it’s an abnormality and a global embarrassment that Nigeria with abundant reserve of gas, crude oil and all the other variables who is one one of the leading members of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries,OPEC, still lacks adequate energy from gas, propane, LPG and other byproducts of oil and gas.
Noting that power is very crucial the life of the economy, Olubiyo
said, “The UN benchmark is 1000 megawatts, MWs, to 1 million population, whereas in Nigeria over the years, due to regulatory flip-flop, we have not been able to surpass 5800MWs peak generation of electricity.
“Infact at any point we tried to do 6000, the grid system, as a monolithic structure, collapses. So moving forward, I advise the incoming administration to review, as a matter of urgency, the entire gamut of the power sector privatisation exercise; it was Marred and flawed with vested interests and corruption. So the monopoly of the DisCos cannot take us to the promised land. It should be reviewed, most especially as the law gives a 10 year window from 2013 to 2023 after which it can be reviewed.
“And now this year we’ll be having the opportunity to exit that cobweb of regulatory entanglement with which the country was arm twisted. So we are expecting a total review of the license regime in which case some DisCos were made landlords or owners of some regional hubs of electricity distribution; that should be broken.”