*Cries out as power outage, fuel scarcity cripple businesses

A civil rights advocacy group, Human Rights Writers Association of Nigeria (HURIWA), on Friday, decried the twin monster of power outage and fuel scarcity that have crippled many businesses in the first quarter of 2022.

HURIWA, in a statement by its National Coordinator, Comrade Emmanuel Onwubiko, said it was pathetic that the Federal Government led by President Muhammadu Buhari and his ministers gathered in Abuja for the All Progressives Congress Convention while ordinary Nigerians suffer perpetually due to erratic power supply and unending collapse of national grid as well as fuel scarcity.

The group also said it was very unfortunate that all university students were at home for over six weeks as a result of the strike embarked upon by the Academic Staff Union of Universities due to the failure of the Federal Government to accede to the demands of the striking lecturers while government officials send their wards to study overseas with taxpayers’ money.

HURIWA said: “It is alarming that the persistent twin social evils of fuel scarcity and erratic electricity power shortage has crippled hundreds of thousands of businesses in the country, with the attendant joblessness, high crime rates, hunger, starvation afflicting millions of Nigerians as a result of this fundamental display of profound ineptitude and inefficiency by the federal government.

“The fact that the fuel crisis has been allowed to fester shows either that the APC-run federal government instigated the fuel scarcity to breed the virus of street urchins who are largely from either Niger Republic or Kano State and who are the main agents selling fuel in jerry cans, especially in the FCT.

“Is it that the APC-run Federal Government lacks what it takes to put to an end, the biting scarcity or that the Federal Government wants Nigerians to react so it can call out troops to kill as many as possible?

“Why is the President not stepping down as Petroleum Minister and then appoint a substantive senior Petroleum Minister from the pool of some of the finest petroleum engineers of Nigerian origin working in advanced societies and locally because this more than one-month fuel scarcity that started with the flooding of the country with toxic fuel is a gross failure on the part of the senior Minister of Petroleum who is also the President which is absurd?

“Also, why is the President not sacking the Minister of Power who has nothing innovative to offer to improve electricity power supply since coming on board? Is the President happy that university students are at home? Is APC not ashamed that it is holding a national convention and millions of motorists are stranded at filling stations, looking for fuel that the dealers distribute to thugs who sell them in the black market? The APC should have shame and stop the economic woes.”

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