Senate: N4.4tn Spent on Power without Any Improvement in Supply

Nigeria loses $29bn yearly to power failure, says Lawan

The Senate yesterday advised the federal government to stop playing the ostrich over the failing power sector seven years after its privatisation.

It also disclosed that N4 .4 trillion was injected generally into the sector as intervention funds in the last 21 years, while N1.7trillion was specifically injected into the sector within the last five years, without corresponding improvement in power supply.

Lawan lamented that Nigeria loses about $29 billion yearly to irregular and poor power supply.

This is just as the Minister of Finance, Budget and National Planning, Mrs Zainab Ahmed, reeled out recovery plans being made by the federal government in the power sector.

These were fallouts from a three-day investigative public hearing on “the power sector recovery plan and impact of COVID-19 pandemic “, being organised by the Senate Committee on Power which began at Senate Committee Room 231 yesterday.

The President of the Senate, Dr. Ahmad Lawan, while declaring open the investigative hearing, was full of condemnation for the signing of a pact, which he believed had dragged Nigeria into deeper financial crisis without meaningful outcome and therefore sought serious investigation into all aspects of the Share Purchase Agreement.

According to him, the overall expectation of the Nigerian government and the citizens was that the power sector, after privatisation, would be far better but lamented that the expectation was yet far from being fulfilled.

“The purpose of privatisation, just to remind us, is not for government to wash away his hand, to run away from responsibilities. When you have privatisation, you have Share Purchase Agreement. This investigation should look at what has happened.