Power Systems and Infrastructure

Obviously a very critical sector on which the country’s projected economic growth is largely hinged on, the minister however said on the short-term plans for the sector, that there was a significant budgetary under-provision for 2015 which could not measure up in undertaking extant projects that are in the sector.

He noted that there are 142 existing transmission projects that are near completion, out of which 22 could be completed within a year at an estimated N40 billion cost. According to him, the government will immediately complete these to add to the growing capacity of the country’s electricity systems.

“There is a 10 megawatts (MW) wind energy project in Katsina nearing completion, a 215MW  plant in Kaduna and the 3,050MW plant in  Mambilla Taraba State all of which need to be completed.

“Our first priority is to get contractors to finish on-going transmission contracts to enable us transport the power being generated to the Discos to distribute,” he said.

He further stated on plans for embedded power generation which experts have recently sustained conversations on, that the government would push such conversation to a new level.

On this he said: “Our second priority is to ask the governors to help us identify and enumerate their most populous industrial and commercial clusters where manufacturing, fabrication, welding and related productive work is going on, especially by small businesses and to see how we can use the existing legal framework to attract embedded power supply to these people who must be ready to pay for the power.”

“The owners of the Discos will be expected to give us their co-operation through flexibility and innovative disposition for emergency interventions while they plan and develop their wholesale roll out plan.

“Our economy cannot wait indefinitely and suffer job losses. If we succeed, we can get a lot of workers back to work in cottage and small industries which are the critical driving forces of our economy,” he added.

Buttressing government’s support for power privatisation, he stated its intentions to continue to slowly stand-down and allow the market forces drive the electricity sector; as well as rectify disparity in price of gas to power plants.

An existing knotty issue which has the potential of ruining investors’ confidence in government’s power sector programme and which Fashola said would be quickly resolved, is its disagreement on a reported term lease of the Aba and Ariaria Business Districts of the Enugu electricity distribution network to Geometric Power, owners of the Aba Independent Power. The dispute has lingered for long while its predecessor failed to act decisively on it.

On respect for the sanctity of the regulated electricity market, Fashola said: “Government is now a regulator through the National Electricity Regulatory Commission (NERC) which is like the National Communication Commission (NCC), which regulates Telcos.

“We intend to strengthen this part of our responsibility so that we can hold the Gencos and Discos to their contracts with citizens. But before we do that, we must play our own role of providing gas and expanding the transmission network.”

Fashola said on extant revenue loses in the power sector occasioned by backlog of debts to Discos by government agencies, that he will task such agencies across the country on timely payment of bills for electricity supplied to them.

“More importantly as a government and consumer of power through our ministries departments and agencies, we must show example at federal, state and local governments by paying up backlogs of power bills and ensuring from there that we pay for what we use.

Our ministry intends to champion this at the federal level and I hope that state governors, heads of parastatals, national and state assemblies, the various state and federal courts, local governments, military, police, and other related security agencies will find this a worthy undertaking to join and ensure payment of all their electricity bills,” he noted.

He also explained that the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) has subject to funding provisions, pledged to complete gas lines that will add up to 2000MW of power to the national grid in the next 15 months.