Former Vice President, Atiku Abubakar, has called for urgent removal of the entire electricity value chain from the exclusive list, so as to grant states the power to generate, transmit, and distribute electricity for themselves.
Though Electricity Act has put electricity on concurrent list, but the bulk of power generation and distribution are still within the purview of the Federal Government.
Atiku in a tweet on Saturday, saw no reason why an industrial dispute with the Federal Government in Abuja should affect industrial activities in any of the states or cities of the country.
“Even as we focus on investments in additional generation, there’s a compelling need for capacity for the complementary transmission and distribution infrastructure to transport the supplementary energy produced,” he said.
The former vice president expressed worry that for the past three week, South East and the entire states of the North West and North East that have been in complete blackouts.
He noted that considering that energy opportunities exist in different parts of the country, “the strategy should be a viable mix of renewable (hydro, solar, wind and biofuels) and non-renewable (coal, gas).
“I wish to restate my earlier recommendation to encourage private investors to invest in developing multiple green-field mini-grid transmission systems to be looped into the super-grid in the medium to long term.”
Atiku called every government department responsible for addressing the problem power failure to be quick in its intervention and restore electricity back to the distressed geopolitical zones.
