The European Union (EU), through its three-man delega- tion, yesterday, dis- closed the availability of €150 million grant for Ni- geria’s power sector.
The members of the delegation are Peter Cameron, Gerrit Clarke and Daud Carew.
Peter Cameron, the leader of the delegation, during an interaction with Sam Amadi, chairman, Nigerian Electric- ity Regulatory Commission (NERC), said they were in the country to assess possible areas the EU could be of assistance in solving the country’s power challenge.
Cameron said the delega- tion, who has been around the country for some days, had interacted with other stakeholders in the sector and was rounding off its consultation with the com- mission so that it would be properly guided on possible areas of assistance.
The commission has, however, requested for the details of the grant for it to study and arrive at a well in- formed position on how best the offer could be accessed and optimally utilised.
Briefing the delegation, Amadi appreciated EU’s good gesture and listed “three major areas of pos- sible intervention as bridg- ing the huge metering gap; transmission bottlenecks, and the need for embedded generation to improve short- age in power supply.”
Embedded generation entails consumption of power generated from a plant within a distribution network without passing it through the transmission network.
In his analysis of the situation in the power sector, Amadi said: “It is a vicious circle; they (electricity firms) cannot get funds if they can- not deliver quality service and the customer will not be willing to pay without quality service. Without quality ser- vice there will be no public acceptability.”
He listed other areas of challenges as gas supply bottlenecks, vandalism of gas pipelines, and that some of the decision taken recently by the commission, like removal of collection losses, were evi- dence based and in the best interest of the market.
HARRISON EDEH, Abuja
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