I Have No Control Over Poor Power Supply —Fashola

To the millions of Nigerians who still nurse the hope that the Muhammadu Buhari government may still have a joker that will solve their country’s electric power crisis, this straight talk may be a rude shock. Minister of Power, Works and Housing, Babatunde Fashola has come close to saying that he has no solution to offer.

The minister who has a reputation for shooting straight and saying it as it is, has just told Channels Television in an interview that in the face of vandalisation of pipelines which carry the fuel input needed to fire power generation facilities, there is not much anyone can do. Asked about his promise to improve power supply, he said: “It is unlike me to make promises on things I don’t control.”

More from Fashola: “Let us be careful when you claim that I made promises because I am ever so conscious of the things that I say and I believe that if I recollect correctly, it was when I was unveiling my ministries, probably sometime late December last year, and it is unlike me to make promises on things I don’t control,” he said.

“If you check the words I used, I shared with you our plans if it worked and where we will be. Those promises don’t factor in vandalisation. You know when they teach you how to generate power in school, they don’t teach you how to deal with vandalisation.

“When they teach you how to do banking, they don’t teach you about round-tripping so those are the assumptions that things would remain normal. There is no nation in the world that wants electricity that vandalizes the assets that produce electricity; it doesn’t make any sense.

“I can control what my team does, I can promise you what my team efforts will produce but I can’t control behaviour that is counterproductive. Those pipelines are national assets; they were built with our common wealth, the people whose territories it passes are custodians of it.

“Let us assume that the people who are also custodians of Jebba, Kainji and Shiroro dams go to break them down because they are angry, then who gets power?”