From David Onuoja, Abuja
It will no longer be business as usual as Power Generation Companies (GenCos), were urged to go for alternative when experts at the Association of Power Generation Companies (APGC), declared ‘no hope in Nigeria power sector’.
The experts made the declaration during the association’s second day program of the 10th anniversary in Abuja, urging GenCos to take full control of the value chain for efficient service delivery as there seems to be no hope in the sector.
During the panelists discussion, the experts said, DisCos and the Transmission Company of Nigeria (TCN), have not shown the capacity to adequately invest on the network, consequently constituting a serious setback to the progress being made by the GenCos in generations.
The Eyo Ekpo lead expert panelists who deliberated on a topic titled: “Collaboration between GenCos and State Licensees (including SubCos) to procure power from/through NBET or GenCos”, said the Nigerian Bulk Electricity Trading (NBET), plc should be scrapped.
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The other experts who spoke at the event, Ebipere Clark, Engineer Belije Madu, Olalere Odusote and Odion Omofonma, called on the GenCos to adopt the same virtual integrated model used by the Dangote Group in the Cement and Petroleum industries to take total control of the power value chain.
These models they said will avoid the quantum of electricity being wasted as a result of lack of investment in the sector, especially in the distribution value chain. Urging GenCos to procure meters and directly collect revenue from the consumers for the electricity generated and distributed in order to keep the sector liquified.
“Nigeria currently has about 10GW of stranded generation capacity, energy that the government said could power industries, create jobs, and even support electricity exports to neighbouring countries”, they said.
Buttressing the point, the Managing Director of the APGC, Dr. Joy Ogajji, said the experts should also understand the workability of the power sector saying, “the power sector is like a tripod that is carrying your camera. One leg is generation and the other leg is transmission while the other is distribution. So, if they are advising that generation companies should take over, what they are expecting is that generation companies should go to the national market or the state market and obtain licenses for generation, for transmission, and for distribution. Will that be possible? And if it will be possible, then policy documents and legislation have to be done from the national segment,” she averred.
On the scrapping of NBET, Ogaji said “the formation of NBET was pursuant to Section 8 of the Electric Power Sector Reform Act (EPSRA) 2005 as amended. As you can see, it is twelve years post privatisation, so under normal circumstances, the reason for which NBET was formed has expired. For the number of years it has been, the market has not been liquid, so you won’t blame them for saying that it should be scrapped.
“However, NBET has come up with the idea that they want to be an exchange platform. The question is, is the exchange platform a change in nomenclature? Do they have money to buy and sell power or want to accumulate more debts? Even if they want to be an investment bank for the power sector, who will bankroll it”, she questioned.
