An expert on power, Kunle Olubiyo, has called on the federal government to reverse the privatisation of the power sector, describing it as a failure.

In an interview on Sunday, Mr Olubiyo, the president of the Nigeria Consumer Protection Network, said that the way out of poor power supply was for the federal government to source money and pay back the investors.

“It is either the federal government does a mid-term review of the privatisation process or total reversal of the privatisation. We did not get it right, and you can give something on nothing.

“There is a high level of fiscal indiscipline, they make a huge sum of money, they gain the system, and they don’t do remittance,” he said.

Mr Olubiyo said that the money government had spent on post-privatisation in a supposedly private-driven sector was more than what the government was giving to the defunct National Electric Power Authority (NEPA) and the Power Holding Company of Nigeria (PHCN).

“The Federal Government needs to reset the process, and in doing that, we need to do a total reversal.

“As little as transformers, buying materials that are needed to be used in maintenance, these investors cannot even do that.

” If you have investors who cannot replace cables, expand the network, then the process is not working,” he said.

Mr Olubiyo said that the non-state actors, the consumers, had been investing in materials to repair transformers and other electrical faults.

He said that such investment does not come with a refund, so the essence of privatisation had failed, which is not fair to the economy.

“We need to get the economy up and running. Electricity is the major enabler for growth, job creation and industrialisation,” he said.

The power sector was privatised in November 2013, with six power generation plants and 11 electricity distribution companies handed over to the private sector.

The federal government, however, retained control of the Transmission Company of Nigeria (TCN).

(NAN)