Civil Rights Group Condemns FG’s Petrol Price, Electricity Hike
By Our CorrespondentThe Federal Government on Sunday came under more criticism for the increase in electricity tariff and petrol pump price last week.
The Centre for Democracy and Development has condemned the government’s actions, saying many Nigerians would be hard hit.
The CDD, a civil rights movement, expressed its support for citizens’ resistance against all anti-people policies, using all constitutional options, including peaceful mass protests and litigation.
The organisation, in a statement by its Director, Idayat Hassan, on Sunday, regretted that at a time when governments around the world were enacting policies and putting in place measures to cushion the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on citizens, “the Nigerian government has chosen to do the direct opposite.”
According to Hassan, the CDD is convinced that the government should have found other creative, sustainable and logical pathways to address the issues which necessitated the price hikes.
The group said, “The resort to the policy of hiking the prices of essential commodities and services points to the absence of the political will to fulfil the promises made to the Nigerian people while this President was on the campaign trail in 2015 and 2019.
Even with the electricity price hike, Nigerians for some days now are facing serious power outage. This is because many power plants are sitting idle.
” Power generation in the country dropped on Sunday as four more power plants were shut down in two days. Data obtained from the Nigerian Electricity System Operator on Sunday showed 13 out of the 27 power plants on the national grid were not generating any megawatts of electricity as of 6am on Sunday. All the eight power plants built under the National Integrated Power Project were idle as of 6am on Sunday. As of 6am on Friday, nine plants were shut down but they were joined by Geregu II, Sapele II and Alaoji on Saturday as well as Afam IV & V on Sunday. The other idle plants were Olorunsogo II, Omotosho, Odukpani, Ihovbor, Gbarain, Ibom Power, AES, ASCO and Trans-Amadi IPP. The shutdown of the power plants was attributed to gas constraint, low load demand by the distribution companies, maintenance, frequency response and rupturing of gas pipeline, among others”, The Punch said.
