Managing Director of Niger Delta Power Holding Company (NDPHC) Limited, Chiedu Ugbo, has outlined measures being taken by the company towards easing the bottlenecks that have plagued electricity distribution to consumers in the country.

Ugbo spoke to newsmen after he led a delegation of management of the company to the inaugural meeting of the Governing Board of the NDPHC at the Presidential Villa, Abuja, under Vice-President Kashim Shettima as Board Chairman.

Highlighting the major challenges, Ugbo said that the whole power grid is handicapped by off-take evacuations from transmission and by distribution, adding: “If distribution is not able to take what the distribution can carry, transmission will not be able to take what is generated.” He explained that to tackle the problem, NDPHC is working to ensure end-to-end, from generation to end users.

The NDPHC boss said: “We are working with distribution companies now. So, we are working with transmission companies to clear the bottlenecks. We also work with distribution companies to clear the bottlenecks to ensure that we reach the end users.

“We equally have distribution interventions all over the country and in all the states to ensure that we improve the capacity of distribution companies.

“Right now, we are working with Eko and Ibadan distribution companies using bilateral sales. So, we sell directly to them. Thankfully, we are being paid as and when due with the ones we are selling.

“We are also targeting industrial and huge consumers who, by the National Electricity Regulatory Commission’s regulation, can take two megawatts and above. We are supplying them and working on supplying more.”

On the challenges the NDPHC is facing and efforts to resolve them, Ugbo said: “We have a mandate, as the Niger Delta Power Holding Company Limited. The federal, state, and local council governments have spent a lot of money in terms of assets developed on behalf of Nigerians.”

“The assets are there so we have been charged to make sure that the assets are optimised, for the benefit of Nigerians. We need maximum performance of the assets, particularly the power generation assets, where we have gas limitations. 

“We also have transmission and distribution limitations, but we are a government investment, and we will work with the relevant stakeholders to make sure we resolve these challenges and to ensure that the load from these power plants is off taken for the benefit of Nigerians.”