Having sparred for so long with his local electricity distribution company (DisCo) with no respite anywhere in sight, my colleague, Tunji Adegboyega, is wont to tell anyone that cares to listen that the sector has no future in the hands of the operators in that segment of the value chain.
Unlike most Nigerians who would rather hand over the matter to God and hope that by some miracle, the local electricity supplier will become ‘born again’ and hence mend their ways, the irrepressible journalist’s pen has been as sharp and unsparing as his presence in his local NERC consumer forum has been constant and consistent.
To our regular but sometimes pesky joke of likening his odyssey to the proverbial thief helping himself to a bird from the pen of the neighbourhood pauper and who must endure his daily rant – this rather than dampen, seems to have an opposite effect of strengthening our colleagues’ resolve.
That is the only way to explain the scores of mails not only to his service provider but to the regulator on subjects ranging from poor service delivery, non-provision of prepaid meters, outrageous billing system; name it.
In one of his numerous tangos with the service provider at the NERC consumer forum in April, one recalls that he actually got the body to direct Ikeja Electric to immediately reconnect him after being yanked off the National Grid for almost six months – never mind that the directive was roundly ignored.
After marking his first anniversary without a joule of electricity from his local supplier, now he tells me he can write a bestseller based on his travails in the hand of an irresponsible service provider!
His ordeal, like those of millions of ill-served electricity consumers, endures. In other words, he is not alone in this affliction. And neither is the ill-treatment of the electricity consumer exclusive to any service provider.
As my colleague is often reminded, aside epileptic supply which has remained standard fare, the luxury of paying for the unit consumed, or the option of a credible medium to ventilate perceived grievances, still belongs in the future.
And that is when he’s not called up to pay for the supply service cables, transformers and – you guessed right – pre-paid meters!
That is however only one-half of the story of the 11 inept entities foisted on a hapless people under the dubious privatization; the other, more insidious, is the revelation is that we may have been nursing a blood-sucking horde all along.
Consider for instance, this alarming statistics from the Nigerian Bulk Electricity Trading, NBET, Plc on the electricity sold to the Discos from January to August.
Of the N419.18bn invoice for the energy received for the eight-month period, The Punch, quoting NBET reports that the 11 Discos only managed to pay N97.04bn (23 percent) leaving the system with an N322.14b hole.
According to the newspaper, Kaduna Electric did not remit a dime to the bulk trader in February, March, April, June and August.
For Port Harcourt DisCo, nothing was paid in February, March and April; ditto Kano Electricity Distribution Company for the months of February, March and July.
For Benin Electricity Plc nothing was paid in March and July, while Enugu Electricity Distribution Company made no remittance in April and July.
Jos Electricity Distribution Company paid nothing in March and June, and Yola Electricity Distribution Company, failed to make any payment in March.
To imagine the toll on the other players – the gas suppliers, the generating companies and the transmission company – is to appreciate why the system, as currently configured, is not only doomed but programmed to bring down the roof on everyone’s’ head!
But then, if that is any revelation, it could hardly be described as new. Neither is last week’s unflattering characterization of the privatization exercise by Senate President Ahmad Lawan as “fraudulent”.
Indeed, there have been manifestations of the affliction although in different shades over the course 14 years since the entities were handed to the current owners.
One such was at the 2017 23rd Nigeria Economic Summit (NES) when, Tony Elumelu, the billionaire chairman of Heirs Holding – one of the operators in the power sector –requested for funds to bail out the sector during one of the plenaries – to which Vice-President Yemi Osinbajo, had retorted: transfer ownership to new investors if you can’t get the business going!
Two years on, we have finally come the full cycle. A bunch of operators that takes without replenishing, and yet have, in equal measure, failed to deliver value.
They remain the weakest link in the power sector value chain. Worse, their failure to live up to their billings both in service obligations to the consumer and more critically, to their suppliers, now threatens to throw the entire sector into jeopardy.
That is the sorry situation in which the nation has found itself.
Little wonder the current shuffling of feet on what to do. Few weeks back, an obviously distraught National Economic Council reportedly charged Governor Nasir El-Rufai of Kaduna State with the task of reviewing government’s 40% stake in the distribution companies.
A little earlier, the regulator had served a cancellation notice on eight power distribution companies viz – Abuja, Benin, Enugu, Ikeja, Kaduna, Kano, Port Harcourt and Yola DisCos – for their alleged breach of the provisions of Electric Power Sector Reform Act and the 2016 – 2018 Minor Review of Multi Year Tariff Order and Minimum Remittance Order for the Year with a December 7 deadline.
Taken together with the proposed final review of the five-year performance agreement of the DisCos expected to take place by December 31, the die would ordinarily appear to have been cast!
But then, haven’t we seen all that before? Here, I am reminded of what Minister of State for Budget and National Planning, Mrs. Zainab Ahmed said a little over two years ago – at the aforementioned 23rd Nigeria Economic Summit (NES): “We have now come to the point where government which is a stakeholder in the power sector and other stakeholders must come together and decide and cede some of their holdings to new investors that will inject new funding; investors that have the expertise to grow the power sector that will serve Nigerians.”
“It’s a process that is on-going; it involves negotiating with the existing owners and also with the government in deciding the right level of holdings that will go up for another round of sale.
“The privatisation has not worked out. We discovered that many of the companies are indebted to the banks, making it difficult for them to make fresh investments in their infrastructure. All stakeholders must come together to grow the sector, especially in discussing with the existing owners.”
“We have now come to the point…” That was in October 2017. Precisely the same point we are in December 2019! (The Nation)
