By Victor AHIUMA-YOUNG

AS if speaking the mind of many Nigerians, the President-General of Trade Union Congress of Nigeria, TUC, Comrade Peter Esele, has taken a critical appraisal of the Nigeria’s Power sector and returned a damning verdict that the operators of the industry are not only confused, but are clueless.

The leader of the umbrella body of the senior staff associations in the country, faulted government recent pronouncement that it wants to spend some billions of Naira on gas to power the Power Plants, saying “ it is unacceptable given the quantum of resources claimed to have already been spent in this sector.”

According to Esele “The penchant for us to stand things on their head has become widely pronounced and there is no other sector in which this has become embarrassingly more profound than in the power sector. The contradiction is that our leaders have acknowledged the centrality of this to the revival of the nation’s economy and the creation of jobs, yet they have refused to do anything about it.

It is unimaginable that we are talking about generating 4000 megawatts of electricity when serious countries with less than half of our population are in the region of 50000 megawatts. Even this 4000 has become a mirage and when achieved has become unstable.

The situation presently has become worse than it used to be before all the promises. We are reliably informed that the present power generation stands somewhere below 3,000 megawatts. This is indeed not amusing.”

“Just in April, we woke up with the news that this government wants to spend some billions of Naira on gas to power the Power Plants. This is unacceptable given the quantum of resources claimed to have already been spent in this sector.

We are at a loss as to where all the previous Billions went to. What we see here is the continuous mistake of our government to throw money at challenges instead of creatively confronting them. We need Milestones here that are achievable and commitment on the part of government to see them attained.

There are serious worrying signs about the cluelessness of the operators of the Power sector as recently portrayed in the “finger pointing” exercise that led to the sacking of the Heads of the operating units of all the Power holding company’s subsidiaries over the accusation of sabotage. When top managers in an organisation begin to point accusing fingers at each other, then, it is a serious sign that they have reached the end of their tethers.