Senate probes suspension of HYPADEC for 9 years

By Ikechukwu Okaforadi

The Senate has mandated its Committee on Legislative Compliance to investigate the reasons for the delay in the takeoff of the Hydro Electric Power Producing Areas Development Commission (HYPADEC) nine years since the act was passed into law.
The committee is to also investigate the utililisation or otherwise of the total sum of N612, 177, 269 appropriated so far to the commission and report back to the Senate in four weeks.
These resolutions were sequel to a motion sponsored by Sen. Muhammad Enagi (APC-Niger South) during Thursday’s plenary.
The title of the motion was “The need to address the non-takeoff of the Hydro Electric Power Producing Areas Development Commission (HYPADEC) nine years after its passage into law.”
The upper chamber also urged the Federal Government to as a matter of urgency constitute the Commission and make funds available for it in the 2020 budget.
Moving the motion, Enagi noted that the Act that established the commission charged the Commission with the responsibility of managing the ecological menace, among other things, due to operation of dams and other hydroelectric power activities in the power producing areas.
“It also establishes the Governing Council of the Commission, the Management, Advisory and Monitoring Committees for efficient discharge of the functions of the commission.
“The act establishing the commission was passed by the Senate and the House of Representatives of the 7th Assembly on May 25 and June 3, 2010.
“It was finally signed into law by the then President Goodluck Jonathan on August 10, 2010.”
Enagi further lamented that nine years after the passage of the act establishing the commission, it was yet to take off.
The lawmaker recalled that the sum of N354, 570, 637, N247, 500, 000 and N10,106, 632 were appropriated in 2011, 2014 and 2015 for the commission.
Contributing, Sen. Musa Sani (APC-Niger East) said that there had been serious issues of flood recorded in those communities during the course of the year which had caused serious damages and destructions that had displaced many persons.
Senate Minority Leader Sen. Eyinnaya Abaribe also supported the motion as former chairman senate committee on power.
He said “we made sure that the impediments to the operation of HYPADEC which was the fact that the act that set the commission up had proposed that they should deduct 30 per cent from the operational capital of the hydro electric companies.