Nigeria lost N4billion to electricity workers strike - Power sector experts
The industrial action undertaken by members of the National Union of Electricity Employees (NUEE) on Wednesday, December 11 cost Nigeria over N4 billion with nationwide outages. NUEE, however, called off the strike on Thursday, December 12 after meeting with representatives of the federal government. At least N1.9billion is lost on a normal daily basis when power generation is at an average 3,850 megawatts (MW), the record of daily Energy Report by the Advisory Power Team, Office of the Vice President for September 2019 indicates. However, in the case of the recent strike, the national grid was said to have fallen lower than 1,000MW and at some point, to a complete shutdown as the union locked out electricity workers across major power generation stations, transmission stations and the distribution stations nationwide. Experts in the power sector said the losses were unquantifiable but could be over N4billion just for the electricity industry alone. NUEE said it protested the non-payment of salaries, pensions and other entitlements across the privatised power firms. The union had earlier given a 21-day notice in a letter written to the minister of power, Engr. Sale Mamman to intervene in the issue.