Speaker Yakubu Dogara said on Tuesday that successive administrations from 1999 to 2015 spent nearly N3 trillion on the power sector but recorded little success.
Mr. Dogara noted that within the stated period, when the Peoples Democratic Party controlled Nigeria at the centre, it was as if the more money Nigeria spent on the power sector the more darkness her citizens were plunged into.
Mr. Dogara was first elected to the House in 2007 on the platform of the PDP. He remained in the party until the 2015 general elections when he crossed to the All Progressives Congress and subsequently elected Speaker.
He made the comments at a workshop put together by the House of Representatives to find solutions to perennial power outage in the country.
“Perhaps the most important question is what happened to the N2.74 trillion spent on the sector from 1999-2015?,” Mr. Dogara said in his opening address at the event which attracted major players in power generation and distribution sector.
“Why is it that the more we spent on the power sector, the more darkness we attract?” the Speaker said.
The questions were amongst 23 key issues raised by the Speaker at the two-day event currently underway at Transcorp Hilton Hotel in Abuja, ends tomorrow.
“I am confident that the array of stakeholders gathered here today are eminently capable of dealing with these and many more related questions and puzzles that exist and will arise in the course of deliberations,” Mr. Dogara said.
The House organised the workshop to complement efforts of the Buhari administration towards improving Nigeria’s poor electricity supply.
Participants will “examine extant legislations/regulatory framework guiding the Nigerian power sector to determine if there is need for amendments or enactment of new laws that will galvanise the sector,” Mr. Dogara said in a statement ahead of the event.
For decades, inadequate power supply has remained one of the major challenges hindering Nigeria’s economic growth.
The country generates less than 3,000 megawatts for its estimated 180 million people.