Razaq Bamidele
The Nigeria Voters Assembly, a principal Human Rights and Anti- Corruption Outfit, has urged the Federal Government to take back the distribution of power from the various DisCos and sanction their obvious inability to distribute stranded power, lack of capacity, and non-diligent service delivery.which was the same reason the sector was privatised.
President of the group, Comrade Moshood Erubami, stated this in a release made available to the media Friday.
The Group further stated that Government’s regular lamentation and threat to dump the DISCOS is becoming too tiring and conspiratorial on the huge resources that the project of power distribution has gulped without taking corresponding action steps to normalise the ineffectiveness and abysmal returns from the activities of the Distribution companies.
The group also reminded the government that GSM network is obtained through the Mast provided by the service providers quite unlike the DISCOS that demands from their customers to contribute to the procurement of meters, Transformers, Polls, cables and other necessaries and confiscate these tools to be theirs thereafter.
Also reiterating that Sim Cards and telephones belong to their owners, unlike the case of DisCos that send to customers, bill of electricity not consumed and exploit them through unfair fix charges and exploitative estimated bills, yet there is nobody to report to.
The Group queried, ” What capital, land, money and human resources were required to boost the distribution processes to make it accessible and cheaper to the citizens that the government lacked? What manner of staff with required expertise that the distribution companies needed that were not available or hireable by the government that only the Private sector can provide?
The Voters Assembly therefore descend strongly on the statement made public on Wednesday by the current minister of power that the government cannot continue to subsidize the DisCos saying it is far from it.
The group alleged its been established that the DisCos were actually established to be a conduit through which national resources are siphoned to meet the desires of those proxies in DISCOS to settle public official contexts saying this was the crux when Raji Fashola was there and was at loggerhead with them.
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The VOTAS detested the open fraud that manifests while there is capacity to generate 13,000 megawatts but Transmission Companies can only take 7,000 megawatts, while Distribution Companies distribute only 3000 megawatts to Nigerians and in return , pays for only 1000 megawatts!
The group described as unacceptable, a situation in which the megawatts capacity generated will not be bought by the DISCOS because of lack of finance, waiting always for subsidies from the government, whereas finance capital is a key factor in the chains of production.
The group boss, therefore, call on the Federal government to rise and act decisively on those who are merely experimenting on power holding today and show them the way out for takeover by the government with renewed practical measures that will clearly sends strong signal for efficient and effective operations in the power sector.
It wondered how long will Nigerians be made to suffer indignity in the non-enjoyment of essential social services while politicians and private infidels continue to corner Nigeria’s resources for their personal selfish usages?
“The time is now! the Federal Government should dump the DisCos without further hesitation and make it to yield position for sanitisation of the sector, since it is clear they lack the financial capacity to fulfil their obligations as agreed with the government, in terms of their ineffectiveness, inefficiency and lack of financial capacity,” the VOTAS admonished.
The TCN too, according to the group must come up technically fit to let its old order give way to yield position for a new that will be sensitive to vandalisation, archaic communication System, explosions and burning of transmission substations and transformers.
“The government must take urgent steps to finding equitable solution to the crisis of grid collapses, interface disruptions including alleged falsification of data allocations to DisCos,” the VOTAS concluded.
