Power supply: FG’s road map will end current challenges, says Fashola

Minister of Power, Works and Housing, Mr Babatunde Fashola, has urged industrialists, directors and other employers of labour in the country not to panic or downsize in the face of current power supply challenges, saying the Federal Government has put a roadmap in place that would ensure progressive power supply from incremental to steady power supply nationwide.

Speaking at separate events, Quarterly Business Luncheon of the Institute of Directors (IOD) and the 13th Distinguished Electrical and Electronics Engineers Annual Lecture of the Nigerian Institution of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (NIEEE), Fashola, who was Guest Speaker at both events, said the current challenges facing the power sector would be over soon.

Establishing the context within which to analyse the current situation in the power sector, Fashola traced the evolution of the country’s electricity industry to the 1950s when the nation’s electricity was managed by the Electricity Corporation of Nigeria (ECN), saying that in all the successive transitions, the generation, transmission and distribution of power units were in the hands of the government.

Noting that he inherited a privatised power sector where majority shares of the sector was sold to private companies, Fashola said the majority share was sold in 2013, 63 years after, when government unbundled the PHCN and sold the generation, and distribution processes to private companies, adding that government only retained the transmission aspect of power, which it manages through the Transmission Company of Nigeria (TCN).
Fashola said: “Therefore, the power sector I inherited is one that the role of government is reduced to policy and regulation”, adding that the functions of generation and distribution were now carried out by the Generation Companies (GENCOS) and the Distribution Companies (DISCOS).

The minister explained that that between 1950 and 2013 that the country managed to generate paltry 4,000MW, adding that only a few, out of the six million known consumers, were metered.

“What is reasonable to expect within three years of privatisation and one year of a new government in respect of a problem that could not be solved in 63 years?” he asked. “It is in this context that we can discuss my role as policymaker, regulatory supervisor and enabler for the private sector-led electricity market”.