The Nigeria Labor Congress (NLC) has called on the Federal Government to scrap and reverse the electricity privatization exercise that is presently in place in the country, advising the federal government to take advantage of the five-year review window provided in the Electricity Sector Privatisation Reform Act, which is already overdue.
The President of the NLC, Mr Ayuba Wabba made the call during the 2022 International Workers’ Day celebration on Sunday in Abuja.
Africa Today News, New York reports that the NLC celebrated the Day under the theme ‘Labor, Politics and the Quest for Good Governance and Development in Nigeria’, the event was jointly organised by the NLC and the Trade Union Congress (TUC).
According to him, ‘the challenges in our electricity sub sector persist despite the acclaimed goodness that the power sector privatization program promised.
‘In spite of humungous bailout support funds fleeced from public coffers to the so-called private investors who bought our electricity assets dirt cheap, our power generation and distribution blues keep getting worse.
‘The truth is: we have been badly scammed,’ he asserted.
The NLC president, therefore, demanded for a transparent investigation into the power sector privatization program.
‘We believe this was hijacked by a few entitled Nigerians to corner the commonwealth without thought for value addition,’ he said.
Wabba also condemned the continued strive by some people in the corridors of power to concession the airports.
He noted that from the Transaction Adviser’s report, there is clearly no justifiable reason for the government to hand over airports built with public funds to private investors whose sole objective is profit maximization at public expense.
‘Our experience with such moves is that the first thing the concessionaires do is to employ casual labor and perpetrate all manner of decent work deficits.
‘Private investors who believe that there is a gold mine in running airports should build their own airports and recoup their investments afterwards.
‘They should stay off profitable airports built at public expense,” he said.
Speaking on the deregulation of the downstream petroleum, Wabba noted that the only sustainable solution to this is the rehabilitation and optimization of the local oil refineries and the building of new ones.
According to him, it is sad that Nigeria is about the only OPEC country that cannot refine its crude oil.
Africa Today News, New York