The African Action Congress presidential candidate, Omoyele Sowore, has chastised the Peoples Democratic Party presidential candidate, Atiku Abubakar, over his comment on the national grid collapse.
Newsmen reports that Nigeria’s power grid collapsed again on Wednesday, as it crashed from the 3,921.8 megawatts that were generated at 6 am to as low as 50MW around 12.23 pm, causing a widespread blackout across the country.
Atiku while reacting to the news of the power grid collapse proposed an “innovative financing” of infrastructure that would facilitate private sector investment in the power sector.
On his Twitter handle on Wednesday Atiku wrote; “I am reliably informed that there was a total National Grid Collapse at precisely 12:23 pm today. This is one collapse too many. It is the 6th time this is happening this year alone.
“Due to the priority that I place on the power sector upon which the successes of other sectors are hinged, I am proposing innovative financing of infrastructure that will involve the facilitation of a review of the financial, legal, and regulatory environment to promote private investment in power, among other sectors.
“I’ll promote the incentivisation, with tax breaks, a consortium of private sector institutions to establish an Infrastructure Debt Fund (IDF) to primarily mobilise domestic and international private resources for the financing and delivery of large infrastructure projects across all the sectors of the economy. The IDF will have an initial investment capacity of approximately US$20 billion.
“In addition, I’ll cause the creation of an Infrastructure Development Credit Guarantee Agency to complement the operation of the IDF by de-risking investments in infrastructure to build investor confidence in taking risks and investing capital. -AA”
However, Sowore alleged that the mismanagement of President Olusegun Obasanjo’s administration under which Atiku served as Vice President was responsible for the recurrent grid collapse.
He wrote, “The National Electrical grid collapse started when you and Obasanjo invested $16 billion to procure darkness for Nigeria, the @MBuhari regime came to gazette grid collapse as a law. Alhaji @atiku, don’t pretend that you care about the National Grid! #WeCantContinueLikeThis”
