Former Minister of Power Professor Barth Nnaji resigned his appointment over conflict of interest in his handling of the ongoing privatisation of the power sector, Information Minister Labaran Maku said in Abuja yesterday.
Nnaji's sudden resignation was announced by the Presidency on Tuesday night without mentioning any reason, but reports yesterday said he left because of a scandal over involvement of companies linked to him in bid for the Afam power plant. Giving what was the first official explanation for Nnaji's ouster, Maku told journalists after the Federal Executive Council meeting yesterday that Nnaji had to go because of the conflict of interest that arose in the privatisation process.
He said the resignation was also to protect investors' confidence and "to give credibility to the process of privatisation of the power sector."
But Maku said Nnaji's exit will not affect the process.
"It will not hamper the process but reassure investors all over the world. This is the intention of the minister following conflict of interest. It will reinforce confidence in the process," he said.
"The power road map is the major engine, propeller for the president power reform. There will be more consistency in the management of the power sector from next year and it will soon be clear that Mr. President means well for the sector.
"We would have loved that Prof. Nnaji who has put in a lot of effort, would have been the one to complete the process. But government is an institution with processes in place. So, his resignation will not affect the process," Maku added.
"Powerful vested interests"
Nnaji yesterday spoke on his resignation, saying he did it to protect President Jonathan from spillover of efforts by "powerful vested interests" trying to run him down.
In a statement by his spokesman Ogbuagu Anikwe, Nnaji said he was happy he was leaving when the power situation was improving.
The statement said, "He (Nnaji) explained that he had to voluntarily resign the office of minister to retain his integrity which has in recent days come under scurrilous attacks by powerful vested interests that were hell bent on besmirching the integrity and reputation that he has painstakingly built over the years.
"This resignation is also to ensure that there is no spillover of these attacks to the President who is working very hard to transform the nation."
Referring to the allegations of conflict of interest, he said, "I would like to reiterate that before I accepted to serve as minister, I resigned my directorship of all companies that I had interest in and put my shares in those companies in a blind trust; this means that I was not privy to the day-to-day business decisions of those who ran this trust.
"In addition, I publicly declared the participation in the privatisation process of a foreign company that did business with a company that I had interest in. This fact came to my knowledge only during the course of evaluating the consortia that were bidding for PHCN successor companies. Consequently, I also voluntarily recused myself from participating in the selection process. These actions, I should think, are in line with the finest traditions of transparency and accountability in governance."
Many ministers have proxy companies—TUC
Labour unions yesterday said that the exit of Nnaji will create a better atmosphere for negotiations over government's desire to privatise the electricity sector as well as the issue of severance packages for workers.
The minister had been locked in bitter negotiations with workers of the Power Holding Company of Nigeria (PHCN) over the privatisation process.
Trade Union Congress (TUC) president Peter Esele said, "I think the minister of power has to take the honourable route, which is to resign and I think we should also commend him for resigning because if you have conflict of interest, the best thing to do in any civilized country, that is what they do.
"There are so many of these proxy companies that ministers have interest in in all of these privatised or supposed to be privatised or on the road to be privatised. It's all laid out, it's all planned. And for Barth now to resign is the beginning of change that is coming in the country.
"Ordinarily in the past this cannot happen, we are not against the reforms in the PHCN, all we want is uninterrupted power supply in our houses. Are we getting that? No, so anything that can be done to let that happen, the union will support it."
Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) president Abdulwahed Omar said, "You see what we are saying is now manifesting, that if you are going into any discussion or negotiation or leading any negotiation with vested interest, it is not going to work.
"If you look at what is happening, the PHCN workers have demonstrated sufficient goodwill in wanting this thing to progress. That is they had deviated from their earlier position that we don't want any privatisation to a point where they said if you are going to privatise, give us our severance allowances, give us what is due to us and go ahead. This is where we have the cross.
"Because somebody somewhere possibly has vested interest, they are saying no that it would not happen, even when it comes to the issue of payment of 25 percent, people in government were trying to blame the workers."
Daily Trust
that is how this country is.no responsible man should join politics.they should run from it entirely.