DISCOs to FG: Concession TCN‎ for improved wheeling capacity

Association of Nigerian Electricity Distributions (ANED) ‎on Tuesday called on the Federal Government to consider concessioning to Transmission Commission Company of Nigeria (TCN) to a country with adequate capacity to expand the transmission network for optimal efficiency.

Executive Director, Association of Nigerian Electricity Distributions, (ANED), Mr. Sunday Oduntan, made the call while briefing newsmen Abuja.

“My personal opinion is that government should concession the TCN to a country or company that has required capacity to expand the network for optimal efficiency,” he said.

Oduntan said government should work towards upgrading the current 6,000 megawatts transmission capacity to at least 17,000 Megawatts transmission capacity for effective wheeling of electricity generated by Generation companies.

He explained that if adequate transmission lines were constructed, it would attract more investors to the sector, adding that this would also reduce rejection of loads by some DISCOs.

The DISCOs spokesman also said the part of the reason the sector is not performing optimally is that government failed to fulfil part the agreement ‎reached before privatisation.

Oduntan said for the nation’s power sector to improve, there must be a positive change of culture by Nigerians in terms of power usage.

Oduntan explained that electricity theft by people who are in the habit of bypassing meters, and huge debts by Ministries, Departments and Agencies as well as many individual users are among factors that have created funding gap as well as inappropriate tariff regime by the industry for many years.

He listed the idea of Nigerians stealing electricity without paying for it and customers not paying for their energy bills promptly /correctly, as things affecting the energy sector.

Others, he said, are the huge debts owed to the sector by the military, Ministries, agencies and parastatals also as the things hindering the progress of the industry.

According to Odunrtan, since 2013 till date, the power sector has a huge sum of N300 billion as its funding gap.

He explained that before, power sector was generating up to 5000 megawatts of power but now due to frequent vandalism in the sector, this had drastically reduced the power being generated.

He added that there was 26 power plants in Nigeria generating electricity but presently, due to vandalism, many of them could not generate power due to shortage of gas to power the plants.

On the issue of metering of the consumers, Oduntan said since 2013 the power sector was privatized, the Distribution Companies had metered many of their customers.

According to him, it remains only 2. 8 million Nigerians customers that had not been metered with prepaid meters.