Babatunde Fashola,
minister of power, works and housing, has been sued by the Socio-Economic
Rights and Accountability Project (SERAP) over his failure to account for money
spent on privatisation of the electricity sector.
The
suit filed on behalf of SERAP by its counsel, Bamisope Adeyanju, also wants the
minister to explain if such spending came from budgetary allocations or other
sources.
In
the suit filed last week at the federal high court, Ikoyi, Lagos, SERAP is
seeking “an order for leave to apply for judicial review and an order of
mandamus directing or compelling Fashola to provide specific details on the
privatisation of the electricity sector, the names of all the companies and
individuals involved; and to publish widely including on a dedicated website
any such information.
“Publishing
the information requested and making it widely available to the public would
serve the public interest and provide insights relevant to the public debate on
the ongoing efforts to prevent and combat a culture of mismanagement of public
funds, corruption and impunity of perpetrators.
“Most
of the companies that won the bids had no prior experience in the power sector
and little or no capacity at all to manage the sector; the privatisation of the
power holding company of Nigeria (PHCN) have yielded the country total
darkness.
“To
further highlight the seriousness of the situation, several years after the country’s
power sector was privatised, millions of Nigerian households particularly the
socially and economically vulnerable sectors of the population continue to
complain about outrageous bills for electricity not consumed, and poor power
supply from distribution firms.
“Millions
of Nigerians continue to be exploited through the use of patently illegal
estimated billing by DISCOs. One wonders the essence of the privatisation if
there has been no corresponding improvement in power for Nigerians.
“Enforcing
the right to truth would allow Nigerians to gain access to information
essential to the fight against corruption and provide a form of reparation to
victims of grand corruption in the power sector.
“SERAP
has the right to request the information under contention on the basis of
several provisions of the freedom of information (FOI) act, 2011.”
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