FG’s Controversial Bailout Plan for Power Firms

The meaning of private enterprise in the minds of the ordinary man on the street and indeed a layman is the fact that they operate independently, both financially or otherwise i.e. create its own policy (ies) sets its target as well as generate and administer its finance with the aim of maximizing profit while offering quality service delivery.

From the aforestated, it was no surprise millions of Nigerians greeted the sale of Power Holding Company of Nigeria, PHCN to different “private” power generating and distribution firms earlier in the year. The “privatization” was so celebrated as a major achievement of the President Goodluck Ebele Jonathan administration by those in government and the average Nigerian due to similar stride recorded in the telecommunication sector by the Chief Olusegun Obasanjo administration.

It was not long the “sale” of PHCN was done that electricity consumers in the country, especially ordinary Nigerians witnessed a shocking rise in tariff without a corresponding increase in power supply. Rather, the epileptic power situation worsened in most areas and consumers, whether prepaid, analogue meter users or those with estimated bills are being made to grapple with an astronomical increase in tariff. As at today, many Nigerians still refer to the electricity firms as NEPA or PHCN because nothing positive has happened to electricity generation, distribution and supply, let alone unmask those behind the companies that “purportedly bought over PHCN”.

It was however most shocking when the federal government only recently made known its intention of giving bailout running into billions of tax payers money to “the power firms” who are milking the ordinary Nigerian dry with outrageous monthly electricity bills and with a declining power supply/distribution, at-least in terms of “real impact”.

Nigerians will like to know the faces behind these power firms and the rationale behind fashioning out billions of naira to them by the federal government in the name of bailout, when indeed other private sector owners whose businesses suffer terribly as a result of near zero power supply do not enjoy such privileges from federal government.

Was any bailout given to private telecommunication companies? Or are private school owners and medium scale private entrepreneurs who suffer untold hardship in running their businesses without getting reasonable service from “private power firms” less important to the federal government?

The thrust of this discourse is that, there is more or less no basis for the planned bailout promised the power companies by the federal government due to the fact that they are “private concerns” whose massive profit is second to the multinational oil companies.

Editor-In-Chief

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