Power crisis, setback to FG’s reform, APC chief laments
Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) has proposed a radical structural intervention in the electricity sector.

It called on the Federal Government to carry out an immediate merger of the Petroleum and Power ministries into a single and unified Ministry of Energy.

The creation of a unified Ministry of Energy, the NLC said, was not a mere administrative tinkering but to “break the compartmentalised fiefdoms” and a political demand to assert national sovereignty over the nation’s energy resources.

The NLC President Joe Ajaero, in a statement yesterday, expressed a grave concern about the continued stagnation of the nation’s power sector, a situation he said had become a perpetual millstone around the necks of Nigerian workers, manufacturers, and the masses.

He lamented that while the ruling class and their crony-capitalist allies in the Distribution Companies (DisCos) and Generation Companies (GenCos) continued to feast on alleged commonwealth through phantom subsidy claims and outrageous tariff hikes, the Nigerian people were left to pay for darkness.

By merging the ministries, Ajaero said the country would be taking the first step towards de-commodifying energy.

He argued that the recent alarm raised by the NLC over the proposed N6 trillion bailout for power generation companies was merely a symptom of a deeper structural rot, stating that the citizens could not continue to apply bandages to a system that was fundamentally fractured.

For too long, he said, the two critical ministries had operated in silos, serving the interests of separate fractions of the bourgeoisie while the productive base of the economy collapsed.

The nation’s thermal power generation, which accounts for the bulk of the grid capacity, Ajaero alleged, had been held hostage by the gas supply gaps.

He alleged that it was unfortunate that the government, through the “petroleum industry,” had been treating gas as a commodity for export to fetch foreign exchange for the elite, while the “power sector” begs for feedstock to keep the lights on.

According to him, the petroleum ministry prioritises the profits of International Oil Companies (IOCs) and local moguls, while the power ministry is left to explain to Nigerians why the grid collapses because the gas pipelines are empty or vandalised by those who profit from the importation of diesel and generators.

The NLC boss noted that under a single ministry, there would be one minister accountable to the Nigerian people, not a collection of officials playing the blame game.

He maintained that the merger was a pathway to rationalise the sector based on public interest and not private profit.

He stressed that it would facilitate a holistic view of the nation’s energy assets, ensuring that gas, a national heritage, would be first and foremost used to generate domestic power to industrialise the nation and create jobs, rather than being flared or exported while Nigerians suffer in darkness.

Meanwhile, a chieftain of the All Progressives Congress (APC) in Osun State, Olatunbosun Oyintiloye, yesterday, described power outage in the country as a major setback to the Federal Government’s reforms in the power sector.

He noted that, regardless of several reforms and assurances by authorities in the power sector, the situation had worsened.

Oyintiloye, who hitherto represented Obokun State Constituency in the Osun State House of Assembly, in a statement, implored President Bola Tinubu to urgently intervene and save Nigerians from further hardship.