By Musa Adamu
Minister of Power, Prof. Chinedu Nebo, has described as unfortunate a media report suggesting that he had admitted the failure of the power reform of the federal government.
Disclaiming the said report, the minister there was no way the report could have been anything but truth give that he said at the said event was clear enough to avoid any form of inference.
“The said report emanated from the minister’s speech at the General Electric (GE) Distribution Power launch which held on Tuesday, in Lagos.”
Special assistant on media to the minister, Kande Daniel, said in statement that there was no way he could have made the statement credited to him or inferred same.
She said the newspaper quoted the minister to have admitted that: “The Federal Government is deeply worried that the current power situation is not capable of propelling industrialisation and grow the economy and it is therefore looking at other opportunities that will create power alternatives to communities.
“To quickly reach the identified communities, institutions and industrial clusters, government is providing the necessary support top the GE on the distribution of power application options.”
The correct position of things, which is being celebrated not only in Nigeria, but the world over is that the reform is a huge success. The vortex of the reform agenda is the liberalisation and private sector take-over of the electricity sector.
“The effect of this major achievement may not have been fully felt at the moment, but that Nigerians now own the process as in other successful transformation efforts such as the telecoms sector is a huge success in itself.”
It said was in furtherance of the private sector as the main driver of the reform that the federal government was encouraging other options such as the efforts of companies like GE.
“The power reform process has not failed and will not fail. Rather, from the result so far achieved things can only look up.
