FG, STATES To FUND $5.37B POWER PROJECTS

[Dan-Borno]

President Umaru Yar'Adua on Thursday secured the support of the 36 Governors to channel a share of their excess crude earnings into the funding of power projects.

The Governors also said they support a hike in electricity tariff so as to make power projects profitable in the long run and therefore become attractive to the private sector.

They equally gave the President the green light to declare an emergency in the energy sector next month.

The amount budgeted for the projects which include rehabilitation and completion of power plants and the distribution, transmission network under the National Integrated Power Projects (NIPP), is for now put at $5.37 billion. States' contribution will be 49 per cent of that.

Yar'Adua had suspended the funding of power projects from the Excess Crude Account following protests from the Governors that they were not properly consulted and the methods of recouping the amount not defined................."
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For how long will our Governor's continue spending our
money without even seeking the peoples' representatives.
For the Governor's to agree to fund a Federal project, I
think it would have been wise to contact the various
states assemblies, the matter be tabled for proper
deliberation.

Billions of naira have been spent before now, and in the
end we were allocated 1,000,000 kilowatts of darkness.
this resulted in our small scale businesses that rely on
electricity to die artificially, giant companies crumbling
down on their feets while in our effort to save the mentality
of our little children at home we keep on polluting our
environment with the "substandard generators".

How are we sure that the share of the States that is being
deducted illegally is going truelly for funding of the power
project and not another kind of ploy to transfer funds to
the white man's country?

It is my opinion that our Governor's should have allowed the
federal government to fund this "unfruitful" project as it is
in the capacity to do so, instead of taking our share meant
for the development of their various states.

Mu dai talakawan naijeriya, Allah ya isanmu. >:(  >:(   >:(  >:(