Former Akwa Ibom State Governor Obong Victor Attah has revealed how former President Olusegun Obasanjo stopped him from distributing electricity from his state to other states in the Niger Delta region.

Attah claims he built a 191 megawatt power generation station during his tenure as governor, from May 1999 to May 2007, the same time Obasanjo was president.

Speaking in an interview on Channels Television’s Inside Sources with Laolu Akande, the former governor stated that Obasanjo ordered that the electricity generated from the Akwa Ibom power plant be added to the national grid.

He said, “I decided I want to give Akwa Ibom State power. The president said no. The Federal Government is providing power for the country. I said: ‘I want to give Akwa Ibom State power’ and then I succeeded in building that power station.

“The president came and I saw that he was happy about what I was doing. He commissioned the power station but went back to Abuja and brought a law that if you generate, you cannot distribute it.

“I used Akwa Ibom money (to build the plant) but I cannot distribute power to Akwa Ibom people? I have to put in the National Grid that is failing all the time. That was how that ended.

“So, Akwa Ibom State, like every other state doesn’t have 24-hour constant power which was my dream for Akwa Ibom. If I had it done, several other states would have followed suit.

“Interesting enough, only this morning I was reading the papers and I heard where our respected Dr Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala said we should decentralise power generation and distribution. That’s what I was trying to do but because of the faulty federal arrangement that we have I was stopped. It should not happen in a federal arrangement.”