Members of Nigeria’s House of Representatives Committee on Power on Tuesday, March 22, 2022, criticised the Minister of Power, Abubakar Aliyu mandating him to take concrete actions aimed at solving the current nationwide blackout rather than always presenting theories that do not translate into power supply to Nigerians.
The Committee, led by Hon. Magaji Da’u Aliyu at a meeting with the minister, expressed disappointment over the lackadaisical attitude of the ministry towards power issues whenever there was national emergency, saying there was nothing in his presentation to show that the ministry was solving the challenge of increased power outages being experienced by the country.
Speaking earlier, Abubakar Aliyu who was represented by Nebeolisa Anako, permanent secretary of the ministry, said the power blackout is caused by the disruption in gas supply to power plants.
He, however, said the outage has started to subside in some areas because the ministry and its partners are working to alleviate the challenges.
In response, Magaji Aliyu, said the permanent secretary should return on Friday, March 25, 2022 to present concrete steps taken by the ministry to address the power situation.
The chairman also said efforts should be made to return the Nigeria Bulk Electricity Trading (NBET) from the ministry of finance to power.
“It is our opinion that we have to revisit the privatisation,” he said.
“We thought you would come with a list of how many plants we have and their capacities today. We have to do everything possible to bring back NBET under the ministry of power.
The Nigerian Bulk Electricity Trading Plc. is the manager and administrator of the electricity pool in the Nigerian electricity supply industry. It was incorporated on the 29th day of July 2010 and is 100% owned by the Federal Government of Nigeria.