The Federal Government, on Tuesday, begged the organised Labour not to interrupt its transformation plan for the electricity sector.
Recall that the Nigeria Labour Congress and Trade Union Congress, had shutdown offices of the National Electricity Regulatory Commission (NERC) and Distribution Companies nationwide, on Monday, over the hike in electricity tariff.
It was gathered that the unions described the upward review, demanding outright cancellation.
Meanwhile, addressing State House correspondents after the Federal Executive Council meeting on yesterday, Minister of Power, Adebayo Adelabu, said that labour had the right to protest.
He said: “My appeal again is that they should please not derail or distract our transformation plan for the industry.
“We have a clearly documented reform roadmap to take us to our desired destination, where we’re going to have reliable, functional, cost-effective and affordable electricity in Nigeria. It cannot be achieved overnight because this is a decay of almost 60 years, which we are trying to correct.
“Nobody promised us or assured us that the road will be smooth. We knew it’s going to be rough, but we must weather the storm, which is going to be temporary. It’s a lot of sacrifice from everybody; from the government’s side, from the people’s side, from the private sector side. So we must bear this sacrifice for us to have a permanent gain.
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“I don’t want us to go back to the situation we were in February and March, where we had very low generation. We all felt the impact of this whereby electricity supply was very low and every household, every company, every institution, felt it.
“From the little reform that we’ve embarked upon since the beginning April, we have seen the impact that electricity has improved and it can only get better.
“So I’m appealing to everybody that one should not toy with this before that we have embarked upon, we are aiming somewhere and we will achieve it.”
