Organised Labour has tackled the Federal Government over claims of subsidising electricity supply across the country for over N50billion monthly.
The administration of President Goodluck Jonathan privatized the electricity sector in November 2013 and handed it over to 11 distribution companies and six generating companies.

Last month, Minister of Power Sale Mamman, said the Federal Government was paying N50 billion monthly to subsidise electricity across.

But Labour yesterday wondered why the government would pay subsidy for a sector it claimed to have privatized.

Deputy President, Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC), Joe Ajaero, asked the government to come out and tell Nigerians the level of money they were giving to the operators of the sector.

Ajaero, who doubles as the General Secretary of the National Union of Electricity Employees (NUEE), asked the government to unmask the real owners of the Distribution and Generating Companies the sector was sold to in 2013.

He spoke at a briefing to unveil the burial arrangements for the late Secretary General of the Medical and Health Workers Union (MHWUN), Dr Silas Adamu.

The MHWUN scribe and his wife and daughter died in a road accident along Abuja-Kaduna.

Ajaero said: “I have never believed that there is subsidy. Let us take the electricity for instance. When it was under NEPA, the tariff was down there; nobody gave NEPA one kobo. And NEPA was running the lowest tariff. It was not subsidised.

“Now you sold it to people and they increased tariff five times and you still tell me you are subsidising it. I think there is something wrong there. And throughout the meeting we told them there is no subsidy.”

“How do you subsidise a commodity that is the private sector? Are they subsiding garri, banana and plantain that are in private houses? Having privatise the sector unless the so called operators are blackmailing them (Fed Govt) and collecting money free from them (government).

“If a product is sold for N10 per kilowatt hour you then privatise and started selling it at N30 per kilowatt hour, with additional N20 and then you say you are subsidising it doesn’t add up. I don’t know where that money is coming from. It is not true.
https://leadingreporters.com/fgn-n50b-monthly-electricity-susbsidy-not-true/

That is N600 billion a year. I am truly ashamed to be a Nigerian sometimes. Now let's calculate;

600,000,000,000 X 5 years = N3 trillion stolen in the last 5 years only in the power sector. Nigeria is definitely cursed. Yet we have been swimming in and out of recession. Imagine stealing this amount of money and still having the guts to steal rice, garri, sugar and noodles (palliatives).

That amount would build several solar farms in the north, giant wind mills in the Atlantic for clean energy and a coal power plant in the South East effectively bettering our power problems.

All of you that participated in this theft, e ni ku re.

Billions in the news everyday yet we don't see
Or feel the impact