Former Speaker of the Abia State House of Assembly, Hon. Chikwendu Enyinnaya Kalu, has called for a complete deregulation of Nigeria’s power grid.
Hon. Kalu, who is aspiring for office of the President in the 2023 general elections under the platform of the People’s Democratic Party (PDP), called for the amendment of items 13 and 14 in the Exclusive and Concurrent Legislative lists of the 1999 Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria.
“I am calling for the total deregulation of the National grid. I am equally calling for the amendment of items 13 and 14 of the Exclusive-Concurrent Lists. They are clogging the developmental strides of the states in that regard, because the current power system cannot give room for industrialization. Those items literally warn the states not to generate or explore avenues of generating their own lights,” he said.
The lawmaker who represents Isiala-Ngwa South Constituency at the Abia State House, made the call recently in a statement made available to newsmen after he picked his presidential interest and nomination form at the PDP’s National Headquarters in Abuja, argued that unless those parts of the Constitution is amended to favour the states to generate and distribute their own electricity, Nigeria’s power challenges would continue to linger.
He insisted that there is the need for the federal government to end the centralisation of the power grid and monopolization of the system; adding that provisions of items 13 and 14 of the constitution are the reasons for the centralisation of the power production, distribution and transmission in the country.
Hon. Kalu said, “There is need for a constitutional amendment, either for the Federal Government to hand off completely whatever that would clog states from generating light, or let them remove those impediments and allow the states to generate their own.”
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