Power sector was sold to clueless investors, says Saraki
Senate President Bukola Saraki on Tuesday criticised how the power sector was privatised, saying it was sold to individuals who had no idea about how to run it. He said the mistakes of past governments “borne out of ignorance, selfish interests and fraud”, brought Nigeria to this point. Saraki said this at a workshop on power sector organised by the national assembly in Abuja. He lamented that the sector, in spite of the enormous resources committed to it for the last 14 years, had remained in a perilous state. “Today, we are on the verge of a total systemic breakdown and I see this as an opportunity to stop this train from derailing completely,” he said. “We sold the discos to individuals and parties who had no idea about running a proper power distribution business. Licenses were issues based on cronyism rather than capital adequacy, market experience and capacity to deliver. Agreements were faulty and transaction integrity hardly imperative. “This is the opportunity for...