Atiku Abubakar
The presidential candidate of the AAC, Omoyele Sowere, has described his PDP counterpart, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar as a pretender and one of those who plunged Nigerians into darkness.
Sowere who reacted to Atiku’s power sector masterplan said Atiku was part of an administration that frittered away $16 billion, ostensibly to provide electricity required to light up the country only to bequeath a legacy of darkness.
He said Atiku, whatever he does, cannot absorb himself of blame regarding the failure of the power sector, including the collapse of the national grid that he took to Twitter to condemn.
Atiku had said on his official Twitter handle, “I am reliably informed that there was a total National Grid Collapse at precisely 12:23pm today. This is one collapse too many. It is the 6th time this is happening this year alone.”
The Presidential candidate disclosed that he would place a high premium on the power sector.
“Due to the priority that I place on the power sector upon which the successes of other sectors are hinged”, the man from Adamawa explained, “I am proposing innovative financing of infrastructure that will involve the facilitation of a review of the financial, legal, and regulatory environment to promote private investment in power, among other sectors”
According to him, “I’ll promote the incentivisation, with tax breaks, a consortium of private sector institutions to establish an Infrastructure Debt Fund (IDF) to primarily mobilise domestic and international private resources for the financing and delivery of large infrastructure projects <span;>across all the sectors of the economy.
“The IDF will have an initial investment capacity of approximately US$20 billion.
“In addition, I’ll cause the creation of an Infrastructure Development Credit Guarantee Agency to complement the operation of the IDF by de-risking investments in infrastructure to build investor confidence in taking risks and investing capital.”
Chief Olusegun Obasanjo
But Omoyele Sowere picked holes in Atiku’s presentation, saying Atiku and former President Olusegun Obasanjo were equally culpable for all that has transpired in the power sector to this day.
Sowere stated, “The National Electrical grid collapse started when you and Obasanjo invested $16 billion to procure darkness for Nigeria, the @MBuhari regime came to gazette grid collapse as a law.”
“Alhaji @atiku, don’t pretend that you care about the National Grid!”, Sowere added.