Court Grants SERAP Leave To Compel Fashola To Account For Over N900bn Spent On Power Privatisation

The Federal High Court in Ikoyi, Lagos on Thursday granted leave
to Socio-Economic Rights and Accountability Project (SERAP) to seek
its reliefs to compel the Minister of Power, Works and Housing Mr
Babatunde Fashola SAN to account for the spending in the country’s
electricity sector.

This is coming as Nigerians have questioning why the power
sector reforms in the country have not yielded any tangible result
and why the citizens continue to stay in darkness but still made to
pay crazy electricity bills, despite the huge spending on the
sector.

SERAP lamented, that the Goodluck Jonathan government reportedly
spent over N400 billion on the power sector while the present
government spent over N500 billion on the sector despite
privatisation.

Hon. Justice C.J. Aneke granted SERAP leave as prayed to seek
judicial review and order of mandamus to compel Mr Fashola over the
“failure to account for the spending on the privatisation of the
electricity sector and the exact amount of post-privatisation
spending on generation companies (GENCOS), distribution companies
(DISCOS) and Transmission Company of Nigeria to date, and to
explain if such spending came from budgetary allocations or other
sources.”

Justice Aneke granted the order for leave following the hearing
of an argument in court on exparte motion by SERAP counsel Ms
Bamisope Adeyanju. The Court also ruled that Mr Fashola be put on
notice and adjourned the matter to Tuesday 20th November 2018 for
mention.

It would be recalled that SERAP had in June sued Mr Fashola in
suit number FHC/L/CS/972/18 at the Federal High Court seeking “an
order for leave to apply for judicial review and an order of
mandamus directing and/or compelling Mr Fashola to provide specific
details on the privatization of the electricity sector, the names
of all the companies and individuals involved; and to publish
widely including on a dedicated website any such information.”

The suit followed SERAP’s Freedom of Information request dated 7
May 2018 to Mr Fashola giving him 14 days to provide“information on
the status of implementation of the 25-year national energy
development plan, and whether the Code of Ethics of the
privatization process which bars staff of the Bureau of Public
Enterprises (BPE) and members of the National Council on
Privatization (NCP) from buying shares in companies being
privatized were deliberately flouted.”

The suit read in part: “Most of the companies that won the bids
had no prior experience in the power sector and little or no
capacity at all to manage the sector. The privatization of the
Power Holding Company of Nigeria (PHCN) have yielded the country
total darkness. The gains of privatization have been lost through
alleged corruption, manipulation of rules and disregard to extant
laws and lack of transparency in the exercise.”

“The Goodluck Jonathan government reportedly spent over N400
billion on the power sector while the present government spent over
N500 billion on the sector despite privatisation. It is unclear if
this spending is drawn from budgetary allocations and if these are
loans to generation companies (GENCOS), Distribution companies
(DISCOS) and Transmission Company of Nigeria.”

“Publishing the information requested and making it widely
available to the public would serve the public interest and provide
insights relevant to the public debate on the ongoing efforts to
prevent and combat a culture of mismanagement of public funds,
corruption and impunity of perpetrators.”

“To further highlight the seriousness of the situation, several
years after the country’s power sector was privatized, millions of
Nigerian households particularly the socially and economically
vulnerable sectors of the population continue to complain about
outrageous bills for electricity not consumed, and poor power
supply from distribution firms. Millions of Nigerians continue to
be exploited through the use of patently illegal estimated billing
by DISCOs. One wonders the essence of the privatization if there
has been no corresponding improvement in power for Nigerians.”

“Enforcing the right to truth would allow Nigerians to gain
access to information essential to the fight against corruption
andprovide a form of reparation to victims of grand corruption in
the power sector. The UN Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural
Rights in its General Comment 3 has implied that privatization
process should not be detrimental to the effective realization of
all human rights, including access to regular electricity
supply.”

“SERAP has the right to request the information under contention
on the basis of several provisions of the Freedom of Information
(FOI) Act, 2011. By Section (1) of the FoI Act, SERAP is entitled
as of right to request for or gain access to information, including
information on post-privatization spending by the Federal
Government and accounts of spending onthe private entities such as
GENCOS and DISCOS.”