By Dele Ogbodo
The Managing Director of Transmission Company of Nigeria (TCN), Mr. Usman Gur Mohammed, has said, the liberalization of the power sector has unfortunately not brought the desired result expected from it.
Speaking after the Electricity Awareness Week walk on Saturday, in Abuja, he said the exercise was part of efforts to create awareness on the sector and the West Africa Power Pool (WAPP) General Assembly commencing on Monday.
While still highlighting the sector’s challenges, he said: “There is this perception that the sector has consumed a lot of money and that there is nothing to show for it. But, we need to state certain things that are very clear here.
The power sector was liberalized some years back, on the basis that we want sustainable investment from the private sector into the power sector, just like the telecommunications sector.
“Unfortunately it has not happened the way we expected because despite the fact that it has been liberalized we still have problem of the undercapitalization of the sector.
“We also have the problem of liquidity crisis, we have problem of regulatory inconsistency, we still have problem of lack of enough supply of electricity to Nigerians.
“There is the problem of lack of sufficient investment by the sector players, that is, lack of planning and this is making people to think that all that we are doing is a waste of resources.” He said.
Mohammed, stressed that the lack of performance of the sector can be laid on the shoulders of the players alone, but that every Nigerian must understand that in one way or the other that they are contributing to either the successful development of the sector or unsucceful development of the sector.
For instance, he said: “If you are building under the Right of Way (RoW), you are contributing to the problem of the sector and if you are one that see and allow vandalism you are encouraging the problem of the sector or if you consume electricity and you don’t pay you are also contributing to the problem of the sector.
“If you are somebody who frustrate the acquisition of the RoW, building of power line either generation or distribution you are encouraging and creating problem for the sector.
“If you are somebody who steals electricity either through illegal connection or through meter bypass you are contributing to the problem of the sector.”
According to him, improper planning by stakeholders through award of contracts is also a bane to the performance of the sector, explaining: If you are one that is given responsibilities to manage scarce resources and you are mismanaging it you are also contributing to the sector.
However, despite the besetting challenges, he commended the administration of President Muhammadu Buhari for doing a lot of good job for this sector.
He said: If we remember when this government came in 2015, the capacityof transmission was less than 5000MWs and as at November last year the capacity of transmission was less than 8,100MWs and if you look at the distribution when this government came in the capacity of distribution was less than 3500MWs and now if you look at the last combined peak, the capacity of distribution rose to 5,375MWs.
“If you look at the capacity in generation when this government came to power it was 4000MWs as at today generation is hovering between 7500MWs and 8000MWs.”
Mohammed acknowledged though that the sector has not moved the way it was expected, stressing, we have not moved the way that it is supposed to be and that is why people are frustrated by our actions. But we also have to understand that the power sector requires a lot of investment.
The MD, said: “Despite the huge investment that federal government has put in the sector, the sector still needs huge investments. If you look at countries that have made they invested more than what we have invested here in Nigeria.
“But what we are saying going forward is that going is that we should ensure that we have consistent planning because part of the reason why some of the investment that we did in the past have not translated to the desired result is because there is no adequate planning and so we calling on all the sector players should ensure that we have adequate planning and ensure that we have prudence and transparency in what we do.
On the electricity awareness walk, it is actually to create the awareness and to tell all Nigerians that the need to fix the power sector must be treated through a non partisan consensus meaning that all Nigerians must believe that we need to fix the power sector and in every action that we are doing we must ensure that we work toward fixing the power sector, he said.
According to him electricity is the greatest and the only binding constraint for the development of Nigeria.
“In TCN we have a club where every week end, we exercise and encourage our colleagues and it is important to know that when we do exercise we increase our capacity through becoming healthy and putting less pressure on our organization and less on medical expenses and at the same time our capacity to contribute to the development of the sector will become higher.
“TCN has started the journey to a sustainable power sector and we are not only going to look at only TCN we shall also begin to push for policies that will lead to sustainable development of the power sector.” He said.