How Electricity Workers Are Blackmailing The Government – By Eyo Ekpo

This NUEE strike is 100% politics. It’s all about one narcissistic megalomaniac seeking to make political capital and feed off the perceived unpopularity of the FG. 

I’m no trumpeter of this Government but there is 100% no justification for the strike. Unfortunately, successive governments after OBJ have proved susceptible to NUEE blackmail. 

Already, I’ve seen a report that the Ministry of Labour is calling for an emergency meeting. To discuss what? We’ve seen the reasons in Joe Ajaero’s letter and nothing there justifies inflicting economic loss and mass suffering by shutting down electricity nationwide. 

None of President Buhari, the two Ministers of Labour or the Minister of Finance will personally feel the impact of a grid shutdown, so why do it? We’ve all seen the videos of some fellow in a TCN station shutting off feeders. Were Gencos warned of the danger of back feed into their power plants? Who or what will compensate for the harm that this shutdown has inevitably caused to various electricity sector companies and millions of customers across the country?

I recall that the ostensible reason for the FG (read the Federal Ministry of Power) rejecting any private participation in TCN has always been “national security”. Yet, time and again, it has proved very easy for a single individual, Joe Ajaero, who is a hired employee of the NUEE and not even an electricity sector worker, to write short barely-coherent circulars and shut down the grid and the country. 

See Also

TIMELINE: How failed nuclear talks escalated US-Israel attack against Iran

Something that not even President Buhari can justifiably order to be done. Always, Ajaero’s intentions are clearly and arrogantly telegraphed but, for some strange reason, national security goes to sleep and he gets away with repeated egregious acts of incalculable economic and physical sabotage. If national security agencies cannot pre-empt well-known saboteurs, what then is the point of the FG retaining ownership of the national grid? What’s the point in continuing to insist and depend on a clearly-suboptimal single national grid? Where are the Police, Civil Defence, military, DSS, etc, when they’re needed at this time?

Ajaero knows that shutting down the grid will not solve the grievances alleged in his badly-written circular but it will certainly make the current regime even more unpopular, make Nigerians angrier than they are already and serve notice to the 3 horsemen galloping to their appointments in February 2023 that he is (literally) a power broker that must not be ignored. And that, really, is the point of all this madness. No surprise if it works once again.