The Federal
Government yesterday cautioned the incoming administration of Major General
Muhammadu Buhari (rtd.) against interfering with the privatisation of the power
sector.
Minister of Power, Professor Chinedu Nebo, told State
House reporters in Abuja after the Federal Executive Council (FEC) meeting that
reviewing the transaction would set the nation back for many years.
Speaking against the backdrop of the current power outage
in many parts of the country, he said the Federal Government had made a
significant progress in the sector, especially with the privatisation. He added
that it would not be sensible for the incoming administration to reverse any
policy relating to the unbundling and final sale of power assets to private
companies.
“On privatisation, I think the incoming government will
be ill-advised to reverse the privatisation and liberalisation of power
generation, transmission and distribution because any attempt to do that would
be to set Nigeria back many decades.” “With the recent drop in power generation
and distribution, there have been calls from several quarters for the
government of General Buhari to revisit the privatisation of the power sector,
which many consider as a scam,” he stated.
The country’s total electricity generation is reported to
have dropped to meager 2,800 megawatts from a recent peak of about 4,500MW, the
lowest in nearly a year. But Nebo said the situation could be redressed by
addressing the shortage of gas supply to turbines. The gains of privatisation
are very obvious. If we can solve the problem of gas like we are talking about
energy mix, we are not just going by gas; we are doing hydros.
“It was this same administration that flagged off Zungeru
hydro power plants for 750 megawatts and is to flag off Mambilla 3,050
megawatts. Shiroro has been improved, revamped; Kainji revamped and improved,
the same as Jebba,” he said. According to him, there is still a lot to be done
in the power sector to ensure steady supply of electricity in the country. There
is a lot of work being done by the government. However, to turn back on
privatisation would mean stopping all of these companies and then reversing the
massive inflow of investments coming into the power sector.
“Nigeria’s
power consumption per capita is one of the lowest in the world and that is part
of the efforts of government to reverse that. So I don’t think it is in the
best interest of the country to review the privatisation process,” Nebo said.
He lamented the continued vandalism of public power assets, which he blamed for
poor electricity supply. I have never in my life seen anything as frustrating
as what we are experiencing today. Every month, the Nigerian Gas Company spends
a minimum of N120 million to fix gas pipeline. Every two weeks, the western
axis pipelines are vandalised and that is pure sabotage. The eastern axis
pipelines are vandalised and that is oil theft. At the end of the day, the gas
that is supposed to go to the turbines don’t get there. “The past three weeks
have been horrible because both the East and the West are affected and as a
result, gas that is available is too small, many of the turbines are sitting
there idle.”
Many of
the power companies are generating 30 per cent capacity. It is not that this
government has not done much, it has. Available capacity exceeds 5,500
megawatts, willing capacity exceeds 5,000 megawatts, but today, we are down to
between 2,000 and 3,000MW because of these repairs which we were hoping before
weekend, we would have finished to shore up 4,000 megawatts again,” he said. He
wondered why Nigerians would always be interested in destroying government
facilities meant to make life easy for them.
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