By Nnenna Ezeah &  Ebele Onuorah
Rights group, the Campaign for Democratic and Workers’ Rights, CDWR, has called on the Federal Government to make room for transparency and democracy in the management of the Power Holding Company of Nigeria, PHCN.

The group called for the involvement of elected representatives of electricity workers and consumers in order to guarantee safe and uninterrupted power supply.

The Minister of Power, Prof. Barth Nnaji, had recently sacked three top PHCN officials, including the Managing Director, Transmission Company of Nigeria, TCN, Mr Akinwunmi Bada; Head Operator of the Nigerian Electricity Market, ONEM, Mr. Uzoma Achinanya; and the Executive Director, Human Resources, PHCN, Mr. Olushoga Muyiwa, over alleged sabotage of power supply in the country.

The group opined that putting the blame on them for the crisis in the power sector is farcical, adding that it is a mere bourgeois tactics to invent false hope as a means of stabilising the unjust social order.

They argued, “This claim of sabotage has not been proven but sabotage is inherent in a bureaucratically run company; particularly managed to guarantee private profit and interest.

“Goodluck Jonathan privatization program will further deepen the pursuit for private interest, which will consolidate on the failure to provide improved power supply to Nigerians. Privatisation of PHCN will usher in a worse power situation or where power supply is improved, the majority of Nigerians will not benefit from it because it is going to be unaffordable.”

Addressing the future hike in electricity tariff by at least 600 percent (actually 11 percent), the group said: “a calculation anchored on false premise that it is only such huge and unaffordable tariff that can guarantee foreign investors profit and attract them to invest. Whereas, the huge public sums being looted at all levels of government is more than enough to invest in the power sector and other basic infrastructure.”

“We must also remember that there was hike in electricity tariff last year from N8 to about N11 per kilowatt hour and yet, power supply had gone from bad to worse.