A one-time chairman of Nigeria Union of Journalists (NUJ) in Imo State Council Ben Osuagwu has described as unacceptable, the excuses being given by the federal government on the power outages in the country.
Osuagwu who made the statement in Owerri said Nigerians are tired of incessant collapse of the national grid that keeps them in total darkness.
He said that the recent increase of electricity tariff by the federal government is highly unnecessary.
According to him, the federal government would have first and foremost generated enough megawatts of electricity for Nigerians so that people will pay for electricity supplied.
Osuagwu observed that what Nigerians hear every year is that federal government has disbursed over fifty billion dollars or Naira on electricity yet the supply remains at 3,000 to 4,000 megawatts.
He said South Africa has over 350,000 megawatts of electricity supply, Tanzania has almost same megawatts and has even shut down some of their hydropower electricity plants to avoid excessive destruction.
“Rwanda that has just come out of war has over 150,000 megawatts to the point that the country does most of its activities with electricity. Even the small countries in Africa have better electricity supply than the so-called giant of Africa,” he advised.
He advised the government to repackage electricity situation in the country for efficient distribution and supply and stop Increasing electricity tariffs.
Osuagwu said that it is necessary to send some engineers to go to some of these countries like Tanzania, South Africa, Rwanda etc and study what they did to reach where they are today. He called on the federal Government to suspend the tariff until the electricity situation in Nigeria is normalized.
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