Minister for Power Denies Comment on Power Sector Privatisation

Babatunde Fashola, Minister of Power, Works and Housing has refuted a report by a newspaper organisation quoting the him as saying to the Senate Committee on power that the nation’s power sector was illegally sold. This was made known yesterday in a statement by his special adviser on Media, Hakeem Bello. Fashola distanced himself from the alleged pronouncement. He clarified that in all his presentations before the Senate Committee, he never used the word “illegally” to refer to the privatisation of the sector. The minister insisted that what he said was different from what was reported. He maintained that he told the Committee that “As minister, I inherited a power sector where government interests had been legally sold,” adding that his statement can be verified by a playback of the video recording of the session. He also stated, “The people of this country through their parliamentarians made a verdict in 2005 when you passed that law that things must change, the law was passed in 2005 and the process was completed in 2013, I wasn’t here, some of you were here. If the process is bad where was the oversight?”