The presidential candidate for the African Action Congress (AAC), Omoyele Sowore, criticized Peter Obi of the Labour Party on Thursday for expressing surprise at the nation’s ongoing grid failure.
On Wednesday, Nigeria’s electricity infrastructure again failed, dropping from 3,921.8 megawatts generated at 6am to as little as 50MW by 12:23pm, resulting in a widespread blackout throughout the whole nation.
Data from the Federal Ministry of Power in Abuja revealed that the grid’s power generation peaked on Tuesday at 4,091.6MW.
But on Wednesday morning, this fell to 3,921.8MW before collapsing to roughly 50MW, a trend that eventually caused the national energy grid to go offline.
The nation’s grid went offline on Wednesday, making it the sixth time in this year that this has happened.
Obi, whose tweet on Thursday about the problem was sent more than 24 hours late, however, blamed the government for the regular failure of the national grid.
“Reports that the national power grid has collapsed for the 6th time in 7 months is alarming. Once again, many Nigerians have been left grope around in darkness without electricity,” he had tweeted.
“Such negative parameters are not only benchmarks for governance failure but a compelling catalyst for leadership change.
“Moreover, in a nation where many go the bed hungry, and national bakers going on strike is indicative of the high-stress level in both the productive realm of our economy and quality of life.”
But in response to Obi’s post, Sowore urged him to cease acting as if he had previously been a presidential adviser to Goodluck Jonathan, who presided over the nation for about six years.
He said, “What a puerile response? @PeterObi served as an adviser to @GEJonathan @OfficialPDPNig govt & the electricity situation didn’t improve, recently you traveled to Egypt to “learn” how their electricity works. Didn’t you learn anything? Why pretending that you just found out now?”
On Wednesday, Sowore also criticized Atiku Abubakar, a former vice president and PDP presidential contender, for his response to the National Grid breakdown.
On Wednesday, when it was reported that the National Grid had fallen for the sixth time, Atiku expressed his unhappiness over the grid’s frequent failures, which have continued to plunge Nigerians into darkness, on his verified Twitter page.
Among other things he said on the thread, Atiku had noted, “I am reliably informed that there was a total National Grid Collapse at precisely 12:23pm today. This is one collapse too many. It is the 6th time this is happening this year alone.”
Reacting to Atiku’s tweet, Sowore said, “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!”
Olusegun Obasanjo, a former president, is accused of investing $16 billion in the National Integrated Electricity Project (NIPP), which would have increased Nigeria’s power output to 10,000 megawatts.
Obasanjo refuted the charge, calling it “incorrect information based on ignorance,” when President Muhammadu Buhari took office and promised to look into the reported $16 billion investment in the national power industry.
The claimed $16 billion spent on electricity projects between 1999 and 2007 was called “a colossal waste” by the House of Representatives in 2008.
SERAP and other civil society organizations had demanded an investigation into the payments, but in a statement from the former president’s media aide, Kehinde Akinyemi, that was published by the International Centre for Investigative Reporting (ICIR), Obasanjo refuted the claim.
