The Nigeria Labour Congress and the Association of Power Generation Companies have engaged in a showdown over federal government legacy debt.

 

 

 

NLC president Joe Ajaero has faulted the federal government’s move to give GenCos N3 trillion from the Federation account as repayment for a power sector legacy debt, which amounts to N6.5 trillion.

 

Ajaero, in a statement on Thursday, said the Federal Government proposed the N3 trillion payment and the N6 trillion debt as a heist and grand deception to shortchange the Nigerian people.

 

 

“Nigerians cannot and should not continue to pay for darkness,” Ajaero stated.

 

Meanwhile, the Chief Executive Officer of the Association of Power Generation Companies, APGC, Dr. Joy Ogaji, said Ajaero may be ignorant of the true state of things, insisting that the federal government is indebted to GenCos to the tune of N6.5 trillion.

 

 

She said the longstanding conflict could result in the eventual collapse of the country’s power.

 

According to her, the federal government’s N501 billion issuance of power sector bonds is inadequate to address its accumulated debt.

 

While NLC and GenCos fight over debt, the majority of Nigerians battle with no electricity.

 

 

Enugu and Port Harcourt electricity distribution companies on Thursday announced outages as a result of grid collapse.

 

On Friday, Abuja Electricity Distribution Company announced an outage in parts of Abuja.