Abdulraheem Aodu
5 March 2008
Kaduna — Barely a month after Vice President Goodluck Jonathan was publicly embarrassed by power outage, it was the turn of President Umaru Yar'Adua and governors of the five PDP controlled North West states to feel the brunt of epileptic power supply yesterday when they were caught in a six-minute power outage in Kaduna.
Yar'adua and governors Sule Lamido (Jigawa), Namadi Sambo (Kaduna), Saidu Usman Dakingari (Kebbi), Aliyu Makatakarda Wamako (Sokoto) and Ibrahim Shema (Katsina) were at the Conference Centre of the International Trade Fair Complex, Kaduna to witness the zonal congress of the PDP when the power failure occurred.
Addressing the convention after the outage, President Yar'adua likened the electricity supply by the Power Holding Company of Nigeria (PHCN) to an albatross which the country must get rid of in order to achieve the desired goal of being amongst twenty economically developed nations in the world in the year 2020.
The president, who was visibly irked by the intermittent power outage, enjoined the newly elected officials at both the zonal and the national levels to join hands with his government to rid the country of the menace so as to actualize the Vision 2020.
During the convention, there was power outage three times as the president, the party chieftains and the delegates started panting for breath because of the scorching heat in the hall that was filled to capacity.
The power outage took place from 1.42 pm - 1.44 pm; 1.53 pm - 1.56 pm; and 2.01 pm - 2.02 pm. Security personnel who accompanied the president and organisers of the congress had to use flashlight from their mobile phones to light up the dark conference hall.
When Yar'Adua who wore an ash-coloured agbada mounted the podium, he cleared his throat and said; "What we have just witnessed is a challenge; because it was when we were about to chant the party's slogan, 'PDP, Power' that the electricity went off.
"But I assure you that when next we meet for the party's zonal congress in this venue, what happened today will be a thing of the past, a history.
"What we witnessed today is what we intend to overcome. This problem is the nation's albatross which we must first tackle head-on in the next years for us to actualise the Vision 2020."
The president further boasted that the North West Zone had become a pacesetter in politics, education, honesty, stressing, "Our zone is the root of politics, the root of education, and the root of honesty in the country."
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