Sam Eyoboka, Olasunkanmi Akoni and Tosin Adejuwon
19 October 2009
AS doubts pervade the horizon over the Federal Government's dream of generating about 6,000 Megawatts of electricity by December, a frontline motivational speaker, Pastor Sam Adeyemi, yesterday led over 5,000 members and other Lagos residents to the Lagos State Secretariat, Alausa, Ikeja to protest the epileptic power supply in Lagos and other parts of the country.
The mammoth crowd and Reverend Sam Adeyemi, Senior Pastor, Daystar Christian Centre (DCC), submitted a protest letter to President Umaru Yar'Adua through Governor Babatunde Fashola and urged the President to urgently break the monopoly of the Power Holding Company of Nigeria (PHCN) as a panacea to the nation's epileptic power problem.
In his address at the state secretariat, Adeyemi called on the Federal Government to break the monopoly of PHCN and allow private investors and state governments to generate and distribute electricity by liberalising the power sector.
He also called for an immediate stop to all forms of double dealing in the award and execution of contracts, which he described as bane of socio-economic and political development in the country after 49 years of political independence.
Adeyemi condemned what he called the vandalisation and theft of power cables and transformers across the country, dishonesty and the siphoning of money from government ministries, departments and agencies in all states of the federation.
His words: "Such practice might attract curses on individuals and the nation. To prosper as a nation, corruption cannot be an option for us. Let us seize this opportunity to develop alternative sources of energy, tapping into our God-given resources like coal, wind and solar energy among others.
"We call on the Federal Government to break the monopoly of the Power Holding Company of Nigeria (PHCN) and allow private investors and state governments to generate and distribute electricity. The strategy that worked for telecommunications should be made to work for power supply," he said.
Receiving the demonstrators on behalf of the state governor, Permanent Secretary of the state Ministry of Works and Infrastructure, Mrs. Oluwayemisi Ajayi accepted the letter with a promise to deliver the letter to the governor.
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