Sonny Iroche: Nigeria Is Not A Rich Country, Size of Government Too Large

Sonny Iroche, former Executive Director of Finance and Account in Transmission Company of Nigeria (TCN), spoke on the continuous growing issue concerning the Nigerian power transmission and its lack of stability in power supply all over the nation.

In an interview with ARISE NEWS on Thursday, the Leader of the Abia League of Professionals Initiative addressed the need for power supply in the infrastructure sector of the nation in order for it to grow the sector. 

Iroche pointed out the nation’s inability to meet up with the demands to effect such growth as the government is struggling with an economic crisis. 

“The size of our government is too large and the foreign exchange is too high. We are not a rich country. Nigeria is not a rich country. We have suffered in the last decade from economic strangulation. We have inflation that is even in stagflation. The misery index is very high which affects our foreign exchange.”

He addressed this after discussing the president’s withdrawal of the altercation 4(45) of 2023 GenCos Nigeria which will decentralize power generation  and allow states to independently generate power supply within their region. Iroche expressed his lack of faith in this he stated that steed do not have the current capacity to sustain such a plan.

“Since they can’t sustain it, they’ll try and sell it back to the government.You can’t build a power plant for 1 billion and tell the federal Government to come and buy it for 5 billion for instance. 

“Now that it has been deregulated, How many states have the capacity to do that? I’m from Abia state where the outgoing administration can’t even pay salaries of workers and teachers. How will you expect such a state to go and start getting into the big high ticket item of power. Perhaps we are trusting  the incoming admin of Alex Otti to do such things but we have people privately generating and selling power in Abia state.”

The Ex-TCN Director was opportuned to attend a round-table discussion between South Africa and Nigeria concerning investments where the power sector was also discussed. He commended Cryil Ramaphosa for calling a state of emergency on the nation’s power cut problem and advised the interim government of Nigeria to take the same step following his ascension to office.

“The interim president should declare a state of emergency so he can fully see and supervise for himself what is going on in the power sector.”

Glamour Adah.

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