By Baron Ike
Most Nigerians have spoken against the continuing stay in office of the minister of Power, Works and Housing, Babatunde Fashola, calling on the government to sack him.
A cross section of Nigerians who spoke to Armadanews.com said if the Muhammadu Buhari led administration continues to keep Fashola as Power minster most of the small businesses in the country would die before the end of the year. Many big and medium scale industries have already closed shop.
According to Segun Adedigbe who runs a barbing salon in Lagos, the former governor’s continuing stay as Power minster has brought more hardship to electricity consumers as they have been rendered helpless and hopeless both in their homes and work places.
Another Nigerian, Bisi Adejo,who runs a small media outfit in Lagos decried what he called “Fashola’s insensitivity to the plight of the suffering poor, the same thing he did when he was governor of Lagos State by pursuing policies that were mainly for the elite.”
“Fashola does not think the poor people have the right to live. As governor he was always churning out polices that were anti-poor through taxations of all sorts and deliberate neglect of the places the poor were living in Lagos,” Adejo said.
Also, Mrs. Abigail Ako who runs a restaurant at Yaba area of Lagos advised Buhari to take away the Power ministry from Fashola “if he wants the economy of the country to be salvaged. She regretted that since Fashola came on board the Ministry of Power her business has suffered severe set back with most of her personnel being disengaged from the business.
Ako said she was not alone in the hardship lack of electricity supply had caused her as most of her business partners have either folded up or offering marginal services.
Another Nigerian, Mallam Yakubu Turaki told Armadanews that he uses all the money he makes from his small food shop in Abuja to buy fuel, saying ” this is too much burden for me to bear.”
From Mr. Andrew Chukwu who runs a private school in Umuahia, Abia State, Fashola has not really taken it upon himself to deal with the excesses of the Distribution and Generation Companies as most of them lack the capacity to run the business.
Chukwu said it baffles him whenever he hears Fashola defending the organisations that are killing businesses in the country instead of putting them on their toes. “The impression I get at times is that the former governor of Lagos may be an interested party in the Discos and Gencos saga because all he does is to ask the government to give them more money. For what? For giving Nigerians darkness?
“Unfortunately the Discos and Gencos now carry on with the mentality of those who are doing Nigerians a favour forgetting that certain agreements were reached before they bought the right to deliver power to Nigerians.””
There are also Nigerians who did not want their names in print but who are so angry that Fashola cannot defend his outing in Lagos as the poster boy of Nigerian politics as we were meant to believe now he is minister of a crtical sector.
“What it means is that if Fashola was governor of any of the poor or average states in terms of revenue available to them he would have performed abysmally.
“The best thing this government should do is to take away the Power Ministry from Fashola and give to a more serious person who understands the intricacies of power generation and distribution before it is too late. For now, businesses have died in their thousands and leaving Fashola to continue to superintendent over the power would mean this government wants to kill the remaining ones.”
Electricity distribution has gotten from bad to worse under Fashola. During the rainy season when the situation improves due to rise in water level there is always temporary relieve but the situation is not the same today as virtually every part of the country is complaining that they have no light. This is because there was no enough megawatts proor to the rainy season that can leverage the water level.
The quantity of electricity being distributed across the country today is hovering between 3500 megawatts and 3000.
Unfortunately the government has been pumping money into the Power sector since the return of democratic rule in 1999.
The amount of money so far spent by government runs into billions of Dollars or trillions of naira yet what Nigerians are served is darkness, making it madatory for companies and individuals to stick to generating sets for their electricity needs.