By Victor Ahiuma Young
A coalition of civil society groups under the umbrella of  Joint Action Forum (JAF) and organised labour have kicked against Federal Government planned privatisation of Power Holding Companies of Nigeria (PHCN).

At a briefing in Lagos, the groups argued that government  privatization of public assets had been used to destroy several public enterprises in the country in the last three decades.

They kicked against President Goodluck Jonathan’s Roadmap on Electricity Power Reform, insisted that the scheme is designed by the presidency to hand over PHCN to the 20 private power companies that have been issued licenses since 2005, and yet none of them including Barth Nnaji’s owned Geometrics Power Limited located in Aba, that has so far not been able to add a single Megawatt of electricity to the national grid.

Speaking at an international conference organise to sensitise Nigerians on plans by Government to hand over PHCN to private investors yesterday, JAF’s Secretary, Comrade Abiodun Aremu called on Nigerians to join the progressive forces on the solidarity rally/protests to kick-start the resistance of the planned hand over of PHCN to Government stoogies that would further destroy the sector.

He said “JAF will on Monday October 25, 2010 mobilise and organise Nigerians to reject and resist the inimical policy of privatization of PHCN, which has been used in the in the last three decades used by Government to destroy several public enterprises in the country”

“We are against President Jonathan Roadmap on Electricity Power Reform, because it is meant to hand over publicly owned enterprise (PHCN) to some of 20 private power companies that have been issued licenses since 2005, yet none of them has so far, been able to add a single Megawatt of electricity to the national grid”.

According to Aremu, the goal of Government reforms in the power sector is to take over what is currently being generated by the PHCN and hand it over to so-called private investors too re-distribute to those that can afford the high costs.

“It is profit motive through pricing, the same issue as in fad appropriate pricing of petroleum products, as a strategy skewed in favour of supply and market interests. If we may ask: how does the law of supply and demand works, in a situation where quantity required is far above available supply? It simply means scarcity, exclusion, and high costs”, he said.

Arguing that since 2005, through the power sector reform, the monopoly of NEPA/PHCN was supposed to have been broken with the unbundling of NEPA into 18 companies to work alongside with PHCN, Aremu called on Nigerians to asked Government to proffer solution to“Why the 18 companies founded by the private investors have not generated a Single Megawatt of electricity to date?.

He however said “We are opposed to these policies because they are the service of the interests of foreign and local capital as against that of human beings.