PHCN workers seek jail term for advocates of privatisation if…

By Victor Ahiuma-Young
FEW days ago, the leadership of the two workers’ organisations, the National Union of Electricity, NUEE, and its Senior Staff, Association of Senior Electricity and Allied Companies, SSAEAC, counterpart, held an interactive meeting with Journalists and claimed among others, that the government has not informed them of its planned to privatise the Power Holding Company of Nigeria, PHCN, and that all discussions with government’s  representatives have been centred on attempts to re-negotiate agreements reached with PHCN’s management on their welfare and conditions of service.

On behalf of the two unions, General Secretary of NUEE, Comrade Joe Ajaero, responds to some issues raised affecting the industry.

Excerpts;

Assuming these contentious issues are addressed, will the workers back the planned privatization programme?

Our position on privatization is very clear in the sense that we  see privatization in Nigeria as jinxed. Besides that, government has not informed us about the plan to privatise the the Power Holding Company of Nigeria, PHCN. Any time they do, we can give our position. What the Government has done is that because of one or two individuals’ interest came up with a road map. Nigerians were never consulted, even the Nigeria Society of engineers are already complaining that  the roadmap lacks their input. If we had been  invited to discuss  the privatization or road map, we could have told them to that cues from what happened in Daily times, Nigeria Airways, Delta Steel, NITEL, Oshogbo Steel Rolling Mills, Durbar hotels and in fact, all the public companies privatized.

We are equally aware of what happened in the communication sector when MTN, Globacom, Airtel came in, they never bought over NITEL. In the broadcast media, when AIT, Channels, STV and others came on screen, NTA was not sold. Today, all of them are working and functioning along side NTA and NTA is waxing stronger as well as the privately owned TV stations and Radio stations that are also working alongside government owned.

If people in government feel they have monopoly of ideas, we equally have our own proposals that we are going to put forward. But as at today, the experts in the power sector have not even debated, Nigerian Society of Engineers has not been incorporated into the scheme, they are not even being carried along. One wonders where those driving the process have worked and where they acquired their experiences.

All we know is that the interest of Nigerians is not the concern of these desperate individuals seeking to take over the power sector. They claimed that PHCN is inefficient and obsolete, but today they are scrambling to take over the obsolete PHCN that cannot deliver. Today, tariff has started going up and in the next few months, it would go up to 300 % without commensurate improvement in the power sector.

We challenge the protagonists of privatization to come and sign agreement with the workers that tariff will remain the same for the number of years till power generation and transmission situation improves. They   should alsosign undertaking that should the reform fail, they are ready to go jail for deceiving Nigerians. The individuals should tell Nigerians that Tarriffs would be stable till power stabilizes for Nigerians to know those telling the truth between the Government and the workers. They prefer to declare that when the sector is privatise, there would be constant power supply.

What is your answer to the allegations by some Government officials that PHCN workers are being used by the opposition to destabilised Government efforts to ensure that the power sector is privatized?

If Nigerians can subject our leaders in the presidency, the National Assembly members to patriotic test in the struggle for the enthronement of democracy, commitments to duties, those that have sabotaged the power generation and transmission sector, those that are the contractors that have destroyed the sector and the PHCN workers, Nigerians should be able to know the real saboteurs. It is not enough to make wild allegations that enemy or opposition is using the PHCN workers against privatization.

Those that are making the allegations should able to tell Nigerians where the so-called enemies of government met with PHCN workers, where they discussed with the workers and so on. We want to make it loud and clear that since 2005, we have also said no to the handover of the sector to few friends of Government, even before the erstwhile President Obasanjo left power and when he wanted to sell Egbin power station, we halted it.

Without apology, Nigerians have been following the trend of events before now,  the question for the sabotage mongers to answer now is,  was it the same opposition or enemies of the sector that were using the workers when Mr. Ndidi Elemenu Power Committee came up? Was it the same opposition or maybe saboteurs that used the workers to siphon the money budgeted for the power sector projects?

In a nutshell, what the workers of PHCN are saying is that there are entrenched interested parties that are committed to take over the sector. We have named those individuals and their fronts who  are head bent on taking over the sector. To let Nigerians know, some of these interested individuals, one them (name withheld)  hired Bakkasi boys to fight PHCN workers in Aba and now the same individual has mobilized soldiers, police as government agencies to fight the workers in the strategies locations of PHCN installations across the country.

These individuals are using government instrument of coercion to distablised PHCN workers across the country. Government has all the apparatus and they can tell Nigerians where found PHCN workers, or union leaders having meetings with the opposition or enemies of Government  and the amount they have paid the workers to destabilized the country or privatization of PHCN. These are the issues. When a  Government starts to make wild allegations against harmless workers, I think  there is a problem.