FG’s incompetency caused electricity workers’ strike – Sam Amadi
Dr. Sam Amadi, immediate past Chairman of the Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission, NERC, yesterday blamed poor managerial approach to the plights of electricity workers by the Federal Government for the former’s strike action.
Disclosing this in a statement made available to VANGUARD, in Abuja, Amadi statied that “the strike by electricity workers is unfortunate and dangerous because it shows how our sector can be held ransom.”
His words: “You can blame both sides, the Electricity workers and government that allowed managerial issues that should have been dealt with, we heard that they had written letters for months and the Head of Service people said they don’t respond to those letters.
“If you have an agreement with a group either out of political expediency to either pay or promote them and you later realised the agreements were inimical or not good, the thing is to call them back to discuss, so for me I will condemn government more as incompetent and basically unconcerned especially knowing they have the capacity to throw the country into confusion.
“The strike by Electricity workers is unfortunate and dangerous because it shows how our sector can be held ransom. I am sure people lost a lot due to the outage for business and homes and the reasons are flimsy in my view because the issues are managerial issues that should have been resolved, this is like an unnecessary blackout of the whole country for hours.”
He added: “I remember in 2012 when I was the NERC chairman, about 300 million was allocated for the training of Nigerian soldiers, so if Electricity workers go on strike, they can go back and put back the light, that money was not well used and today we don’t have military armed corp officers that can be deployed quickly to put back the lights if these workers put them off.
“Everything illustrates the total lack of leadership, weak system planning and management of the network.”
He said part of the way he outsourced finance was to create a process for Customers to fund DisCos and have 15 days to get their meters and DisCos will repay them through energy credits.
He said that Christians have a responsibility to play positive roles in politics and in governance generally because of the knowledge they have which is carrying the character and competence to make change.
He said until the country gets the right people for governance, it would be having a shortfall in development.
On his part, Vicar Cathedral Church of Saint Bartholomew Anglican Church in Kubwa Ven., Tunde Oyesina said: “We believe as a church the need to set an agenda for other Christians, to design a blueprint for Christians to follow.
“Yes we pray and study the scriptures but the reality is out there for us, after coming to church we still go to the same market as other people. The realities outside are what we are bringing to the church and teaching our members how to face the realities on ground.
“Today we looked at the roles of Christians in national politics, today a lot of Christians believe politics is a dirty game but with what Dr. Sam Amadi has exposed us to today, every christian should see the need to go out there if not to play partisan politics, then be an influencer or work in government”, he added.
