By Victor Ahiuma-Young

ORGANISED labour has called on the Federal Government to immediately review the sale of the assets of the defunct Power Holding Company of Nigeria, PHCN, if it hopes to find solution to the intractable electricity supply crisis in the country.

Speaking through the Nigeria Labour Congress, NLC, in Lagos, Llabour claimed that those who took over the distribution and generation operations of PHCN, had no capacity and expertise to run the power stations, but bought  the distribution companies, DISCOs and generation companies, GENCOs, because of their privileged positions in  government.

At the end of its Central Working Committee, CWC, meeting, the Joe Ajaero- led faction of NLC recalled that labour had warned against the privatisation of PHCN because the Nigerian private sector had no capacity to run power station, but were only interested in extorting the citizens without providing power to them.

According to the Deputy President of the faction, Mr. Achese Igwe: “Those who took over the distribution and generation operations of PHCN, do not have the capacity to run those operations. Was due diligence done before they were given the assets? Was there transparency to ascertain whether they could deliver electricity to Nigerians? What are their pedigrees in the business? The truth is that most of them know nothing about the electricity business.  As we speak today, there have not been additional investment in infrastructure and they are only depending on PHCN infrastructure built over 30 years ago, which they claimed were obsolete, to run the power supply. ”