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Former vice president Alhaji Atiku Abubakar has reportedly claimed that his former boss, ex-president Olusegun Obasanjo is responsible for the energy crisis currently rocking the country.
According to The Sun, Atiku said this during a book launch in Abuja on Tuesday.
He allegedly claimed to have suggested to Obasanjo to go for a caustic power station project instead of building gas power stations and that unless the Niger Delta crisis was resolved, dependency on gas for energy would continue to keep the country in darkness.
“Obasanjo refused to listen to me and continued with the project and even subsequent administra¬tions continued with it and 16 to 17 years after, we are still not there with power from gas,” he was quoted as saying.
Atiku’s remarks came a few days after Obasanjo revealed that the refusal of international oil companies (IOCs) to convert to power the gas they were flaring contributed to the deteriorated state of electricity in the country.
A report by Daily Post said that Obasanjo lamented that rather than building power plants for Nigerians to benefit, the IOCs preferred to burn the gas as such projects did not add to their profitability.
Obasanjo said this as a high-level session of “Africa’s Energy: What’d the New Deal?” at the 2016 annual meetings of African Development Bank in Lusaka, Zambia.
