Federal Government has commenced performance audits of Electricity Distribution Companies (DisCos) from the post-privatization to December 2021 with a plan to review who should continue as DisCos or face penalty. The Minister of power, Abubakar D. Aliyu made this known yesterday while holding a weekly Ministerial; meeting organized by the presidential Communication Media at the State House, Abuja.
The Minister revealed as of January 2022, the performance Management of DisCos has been fully transferred to the Nigeria Electricity Regulatory Commission (NERC) from the Bureau for Public Enterprise, BPE,
According to Mr. Aliyu, they have a robust team led by Boston Consulting Group who is here to assess the performance evaluation of DisCos from post-privatization to December 2021 and their performance result would be made public soon.
He threatened that those found wanting for underperforming will face sanction under the guidelines of the contractual agreement DisCos signed with the federal government.
Although the Minister attributed the poor supply of electricity being experienced in most parts of the country were due to reduction in water level at the generation plants due to dry season.
He promised that his office is working tirelessly to resolve the problem of load-shedding.
Aliyu disclosed that the federal government was investing up to $4 billion in fixing the grid to ensure more grid power is delivered to citizens.
Contrary to the practice by the companies, the Minister insisted that meters were provided for free, saying his office has resolved that all households were metered through the mass metering program, calling on DisCos that anything short of that will not be tolerated.
He said, “We have said these times without number that these meters are free. They are instruments for generating money, how can we be selling meters?”
The minister further stated that he has identified the right-of-way issue in states as one key challenge delaying some of the ongoing projects to further boost the power supply in the country.
However, he said his Ministry was working towards proffering a lasting solution to the issue through the Nigeria Governors Forum.
According to him, the Nigerian Electricity Supply Industry (NESI) delivered grid, captive, and embedded power to the tune of almost 8,000MW daily and not 4,000MW with an installed capacity of almost 18,000MW and not 13,000MW according to an industry study conducted by KPMG recently.
He explained much of the improvement to 8,000MW was achieved under the President Muhammadu Buhari administration through positive industrial policies.
He hinted that for better utilization of the grid-based power plants, there were 135 ongoing projects for transmission lines, substations, and other associated grid infrastructure, while the Transmission Company of Nigeria (TCN) had completed 30 key substations projects and 12 important transmission lines.
While commenting about the Siemens Presidential Power Initiative (PPI), Aliyu said the government would bring in an additional $2billion or more to the transmission grid.
