Outage as power, housing minister visits APC headquarters

Fashola blames inaccurate demographic data for power shortage
The visit of the Power, Works and Housing Minister, Babatunde Raji Fashola to the National Secretariat of the All Progressives Congress (APC) yesterday was marred by outage.

The minister was at the secretariat of the party where he met with the National Chairman, Chief John Odigie-Oyegun.

Fashola arrived the building around 2:00 p.m. However, there was a cut in power supply immediately he entered the chairman’s office.

The electricity generator was unable to provide alternative supply as it was said to be in bad condition.

Electricity was however restored some minutes after Fashola left the premises.

Meanwhile, the minister has blamed lack of accurate demographic data (population and housing figures) for the prevailing inadequate electricity supply threatening economic activities in the country.

He maintained that correct demographic data is critical in the planning and provision of electricity supply to the citizenry.

He said: “It is important to know the number of people so as to know how much power to provide, and the number of consumers to be supplied electricity.”

The minister stated this in a statement by his Deputy Director (Press), Etore Thomas during the monthly Power Sector Dialogue Series with the theme: “2016 Power Sector Review and 2017 Power Policy Direction” organised by the Nigeria Electricity Hub, a subsidiary of NEXTIER Power, a policy advisory firm with focus on the electricity market.

Fashola faulted calls for a reversal of the privatisation of power assets. He said this would not be done, but rather the process should be given time to mature.

In his words: “We should think of what to do to make it work better, instead of canceling it, because that will only take us backward. Every time we cancel contracts, it sends negative signal to foreign investors that we do not respect agreements. With privatisation, government is now a policy maker and a regulator.”