Kayode Fayemi, governor of Ekiti State says it is time to do away with a national grid so as to effectively tackle epileptic power supply in the country.
Fayemi said this during an interactive session after he declared his intention to constest the 2023 presidential race on the platform of the All Progressives Congress (APC) on Wednesday in Abuja.
He said: “We now need to begin to look seriously in the direction of zonal or regional grids or even micro, or mini grids outside of the mainstream of official national energy grid.
“It’s the only way to solve this problem. Our focus our energy on renewable energy as well. This National grid is completely broken and fixing it everyday is a problem that we cannot easily tackle.”
The Chairman of Nigerian Governors Forum said to tackle the rising insecurity in the country, adequate steps must be taken on intelligence, better recruitment and equipment in order to address the issue.
“There is a lot that the government is doing that the government can not talk about some times. There are also areas of impediments that we need to tackle quickly. Our principal officers in the security sector given my background that I spoke about, this country was able to recruit in an emergency manner in 1967. It moved from an army of 10,000 to 250,000, within the space of one year.
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“Today, there are all sorts of bureaucratic impediments that are not allowing us to expand the men and women that we have in the armed forces and in the police. Now, we need to do that quickly. If we are not able to do that in the shortest possible time, by clearing the windows bureaucratic impediments, we need to bring on board our reserved elements who are still on duty.
“Our soldiers even in retirement they are on duty: major generals, Colonels, Brigadier they’re all over the place. Many of them would love to serve and help tackle this problem probably in the shortest possible because it is, firstly, the problem of men. We don’t have enough people in uniform, and even the ones we have, they are undertaking police duties,” Fayemi said.
On unemployment, the former Minister of Mines and Solid Minerals said: “For me, it is not the job of government to start focusing on employment. But it is our job to provide a living environment for private sector to thrive; for the agricultural sector to thrive; for the infrastructure sector that we have to create jobs; and there’s so many jobs tied to these various critical segments of our economy.
“That is what we need to do. In addition to address the question of skills, because we talked about employments, majority of young people don’t have the requisite skills to do the job that is necessary. We need innovation, we need creativity. We need technology. We need skills in addition to provide the enabling environment to allow this to happen.”
Fayemi said he would tackle impunity in the country, lamenting that Nigerian leaders lack courage to do what is right which has been the bane of the country’s development.
“What is also lacking in Nigeria is the leadership, the courage to do that what is right. Some people consider themselves as principalities and people who believe that they are the owners of this country, and then do whatever they like. They also believe that the law can not catch up with them.
“We will not be arbitrary but we would be very very sneaky about upholding the rule of law, and access to justice to all Nigerians. There are different levels of impunity. Impunity reigns because our justice system has been crippling and because the entire justice sector system in our country is problematic. If we look at the journey from the investigation of the crime, to conviction of the crime you would have forgotten that the person actually committed the crime.
“I think swift delivery of justice, access to justice, accountability in society are areas we need to pay attention to. We need to also support our judicial officers, so that we will not again tempt them to resort to other misbehaviour because the state has not taken on its own responsibility in terms of remuneration, in terms of support to the judicial officers.”
