Editor, Politics/Features, EMEKA ALEX DURU, looks at one year of federal government’s power reform initiative, identifying some achievements and areas requiring further attention
If the expression of excitement by the Minister of Power, Professor Chinedu Nebo, last week, would be anything to go by, Nigerians may soon be through with tales of epileptic power supply.
Chinedu Nebo
According to the minister, the federal government is targeting up to 75 per cent access to electricity by 2020. Nebo, who made the disclosure in Abuja, said an average of 1.5 million households would be connected annually.
He explained that the ongoing reforms in the power sector would improve access through grid extension, adding that government is working to expand access to electricity (off-grid) to the remote and rural areas, which is essential in fulfilling the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).
“Electrifying Nigeria will be a source of economic and social development in Nigeria that will improve citizens’ quality of life and bring about developments,” Nebo stated.
For a country whose access to electricity is estimated at about 50 per cent with about 30 million households without access, the disclosure by the minister could be re-assuring.
This, incidentally, would not be the first time the minister would be raising hope on the sector. In fact, last year, at an occasion, he had enthused that the investments in the telecommunications sector since the introduction of mobile telephony in the country would be dwarfed by the anticipated gains in the power industry by the time the on-going reforms begin to take shape.
“We envisage that the power would dwarf the telecommunications sector in what we are going to see happen. It is going to re-energise the economy. The whole manufacturing and industrial sectors will begin to boom. In addition, small and medium-scale enterprises will begin to spring up all over the places,” he stated.
Nebo may have been emboldened by the reported improved power supply in some towns and cities in the country.
Ikeja, capital of Lagos; Awka, Anambra State capital; and Kaduna metropolis in Kaduna State particularly stand out in these instances. Power supply in Ikeja, for instance, is said to have improved appreciably since last year.
Sunday Taiwo, an electric welder who spoke with TheNiche on the development, stressed that the improved power supply has engaged him and his colleagues more, as they now make more returns.
“What is happening has saved us from depending on power generators, which cannot even carry all the jobs. It is not every fabrication that we use generators to do. Even if we must, it would then entail hiring bigger generators, and these do not come easy. What it meant was that at the end of the day, no matter what we charged, we hardly made much gain. But with the improved power supply, our charges are coming down and the works are becoming cleaner and less stressful,” he remarked.
Taiwo prayed that there would not be a relapse in the power supply situation, recalling that there had been instances in the past when the city had experienced momentary surge in power that did not last, especially when elections were by the corner.
He recalled: “We had had such situations in the past, especially during election periods when we had been enticed with steady power supply. We, however, were taken to square one as soon as the elections were over.”
The supply situation in Awka is reportedly eliciting silent celebration, especially in the face of what residents describe as the new face of commercial activities.
It was learnt that the new deal has to do with the Agu-Awka Power Station that has come alive with a new transmission line that was installed last year.
Officials of the Power Ministry attribute the improved power supply to insight and commitment on the part of the minister, especially in keeping faith with the power sector roadmap.
Nebo’s media aide, Kande Daniel, had, in explaining how the minister got his bearing right, disclosed that he had, in order to provide the formidable and focused leadership required to move the sector ahead, held meetings and consultations with stakeholders.
The interaction, she stressed, established unprecedented synergy among the stakeholders and their different but related roles, resulting in a unified power sector with the same agenda, same focus and same commitment to deliver more power.
Daniel added that seeing that the inability of the nation’s transmission capability at the time was grossly inadequate to wheel out even the available transmitted wattage, “the minister, early in the day, took the bold, quick step of empowering the contracted managers of the Transmission Company of Nigeria (TCN) to resume work by presenting the required Schedule of Delegated Authority (SODA) to them. This was followed swiftly by the inauguration of the Supervisory Board of the company.”
She also identified the beneficial impacts of the massive fund-raising efforts by the minister for infrastructure upgrade, adding that they had been yielding substantial results. Among these were funding from the African Development Bank (AfDB) and the Eurobond.
The Federal Executive Council (FEC), she added, had earlier in the year, approved N1.9 billion for the supply of 746 kilometres of Aluminum Conductor Composite Reinforced (ACCR) for the re-conduction of the Onitsha/New Haven 330kv transmission line that runs up to Makurdi in Benue State.
Nebo, according to Daniel, also took a tour of some generation, transmission and distribution facilities across the country, commissioning and activating some, including some high technology-based initiatives, towards eliminating stressful processes and fraudulent practices in metering and billing.
Totality of these efforts, TheNiche gathered, accounted for improved power supply in some capital cities.
At the rural communities and satellite towns, however, the story is not the same. In Lagos, for instance, while some residents of Ikeja and Alausa Business Districts are celebrating the new dawn, their counterparts in FESTAC Town and environs are still contending with poor power supply.
“It had not been this bad. We had thought that with the reform in the power sector, things would be better. But it seems that the privatisation exercise has rather increased our woes. Unlike before when we had days we could boast of power, we now virtually live on power generating sets. The Power Minister should do something about this,” lamented Enyinnaya Ikeogu, who runs a business centre in Satellite Town, Lagos.
Our investigations indicated similar complaints in other parts of the country.