By Fidelis Udu
Former Vice President, and candidate of the People’s Democratic Party, PDP, in the 2023 presidential election, has decried the collapse of the National Grid on Wednesday, describing it as a collapse too many.
The collapse, announced Wednesday, is the sixth this year, and Atiku said such embarrassing situation would never occur under his watch as President even as he outlined what he would do to redeem the situation if elected President next year.
The PDP presidential candidate made the response on his official Twitter handle, @atiku.
His words:
“I am reliably informed that there was a total National Grid Collapse at precisely 12:23pm today. This is one collapse too many. It is the 6th time this is happening this year alone.
“Due to the priority that I place on the power sector upon which the successes of other sectors are hinged, I am proposing innovative financing of infrastructure that will involve the facilitation of a review of the financial, legal, and regulatory environment to promote private investment in power, among other sectors.
“I’ll promote the incentivisation, with tax breaks, a consortium of private sector institutions to establish an Infrastructure Debt Fund (IDF) to primarily mobilise domestic and international private resources for the financing and delivery of large infrastructure projects across all the sectors of the economy.
“The IDF will have an initial investment capacity of approximately US$20 billion.
“In addition, I’ll cause the creation of an Infrastructure Development Credit Guarantee Agency to complement the operation of the IDF by de-risking investments in infrastructure to build investor confidence in taking risks and investing capital. -AA”
