While answering a
question at a town hall meeting in Abuja on Tuesday, Babatunde Fashola,
minister of works, power, and housing, told anyone that is not happy about
his
supervision of three ministries to send their complaints to President Muhammadu
Buhari.
Here are 3 key things he said, you should know,
1.To merge cost
“Whether I can cope with three ministries or not, let us be clear on
this. On the one hand, we have spoken about the cost of running government. And
in trying to mitigate or reduce that cost, Mr. President, in his own wisdom,
decided to merge three ministries together,” he said.
2.His duty is supervisory
So, my work really there is supervisory and directional. Today in the
ministry of works, and in the ministry of housing, where there are over 4000
personnel, the number is reducing. The ministry of power has barely 800 staff
today and the number is reducing as we are gaining traction.
3.Result so far
“So, it is no longer a government-driven sector, it is now a
government-regulated sector driven by private sector. And if you have issues
about that, I think you should complain to Mr. President. For me, the privilege
is to serve my country in whatever capacity I am designated to.
Two of those ministries have had a natural relationship over years, they
were either works and housing, or lands, works and something. In adding power
to it, let us remember that essentially the work that is left in power is just
to complete the privitisation and complete the transmission grid.
The distribution is now in the hands of companies. All of the work that
NEPA (National Electric Power Authority) used to do is now in terms of distributing
power is now in the hands of 11 companies. What they used to do in terms of
generating power is now in the hands of six companies.
The agency called NERC (National Electricity Regulation Commission (NERC)
is the regulator of the power sector, in getting licenses issued and so on and
so forth. And a statutory company called MBET. All of these institutions are
taking positions and evolving.”
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