Stakeholders have called for greater accountability in the management of public water infrastructure, power and waste management in Nigeria.
The stakeholders, drawn from trade unions and Civil Society Organisations (CSOs), made the call at the National Public Utilities Summit held on Wednesday in Abuja.
The summit, themed ‘Promoting Transparency and Decent Work in Supply Chains in Electricity, Water, and Waste Services in Sub-Saharan Africa’, was organised by Public Services International (PSI) in collaboration with DGB Bildungswerk Bund (DGB BW).
The source reports that the event reviewed the impact of the PSI-DGB project on promoting decent work and addressing privatisation in the water, electricity, and waste sectors.
Mr Philip Jakpor, Executive Director of the Renevlyn Development Initiative (RDI), said that adopting Public-Public Partnerships (PuPs) would improve the management of public utilities by promoting transparency, accountability and quicker responses to public concerns.
The source also reports that RDI is among the CSO partners of the Amalgamated Union of Public Corporations, Civil Service Technical and Recreational Services Employees (AUPCTRE) and the National Union of Electricity Employees (NUEE) under the PSI-DGB project.
Jakpor urged governments to suspend privatisation of public utilities and focus on strengthening public water infrastructure through political commitment.
“The public utilities can work if government has the political will and is ready to ensure that there is transparency and accountability”
Jakpor said some countries Nigeria was modelling from under its Public-Private Partnership (PPP) scheme were taking back their utilities from private companies due to corruption and compromised standards leading to water pollution.
According to him, adopting PPPs to manage waterworks and power plants built with public money is not a guarantee that they will be managed well.
“The power sector was handed over to private companies and 13 years down the line, the argument for which the government sold this institutions is defeated.
“ There is no electricity and Nigerians are paying for it. We have had more national grid collapse between 2013 till today, we have over 150 grid collapse.
Jakpor added that private companies did not invest anything tangible to move from 12,500 MW to the 70,000–100,000 MW that Nigeria actually requires.
“Infact out of the installed capacity of about 12,000MW, the distribution is only in the range of 4000 and it sometimes collapse to 2000, 1500,” he said.
Similarly, Jaiye Gaskia, Director of the Centre for Transformative Governance (CTG), said the constitution provides that essential public services should be delivered by public institutions instead of being outsourced.
Gaskia stated that private companies prioritise profit over service, making it necessary to seek the reversal of privatisation in the electricity sector.
In his remarks, Abiodun Bakare, PSI National Project Coordinator (Value Chains), called for the adoption of PuPs as a better approach to managing public utilities than privatisation, particularly in the electricity, water, and waste sectors.
Bakare said the summit brought together experts, including public affairs analysts and trade union organisations, to explore alternatives to the privatisation of public utilities.
He added that the recommendations would be presented to the government as part of their advocacy for Public-Public Partnerships (PuPs).
The sources reports that the meeting brought together trade unions and civil society organisations from Nigeria, Kenya and Uganda.
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