In June this year the Special Adviser to the Minister of Power, Works and Housing issued a widely publicized statement that it would be immoral for the Federal Government to sanction electricity distribution companies for poor performance in their duty of distributing power because they have not been given the tools to perform. In particular the Minister , Mr Babatunde Fashola noted that the new tariffs approved for the discos were cost reflective and would bring about more gains in the power sector and bring about liquidity in the market in due course.
Since the Minister’s statement , a lot of water has passed under the bridge of the wrongful vilification of the discos as the cause of epileptic power supply nation-wide. The discos have invested heavily in modern meters that work like debit cards so that consumers use power based on what they consume and have loaded on the meters . But electricity generation and transmission nationwide has crumbled because of pipeline vandalisation in the Niger Delta where a militant group called the Avengers have turned themselves into a state within the Nigerian state and have brought the nation to its knees in terms total blackout consequent upon their destruction of gas pipelines used to produce electricity .
In addition during last national strike called by the trade unions to protest the hike in petrol prices from 86 naira per litre to 145 naira , the unions added the increase in electricity tariffs as part of the grievance of the Nigerian masses against the discos who are saddled with the onerous task of distributing a product that was not available in any meaningful quantity and volume for distribution . Fortunately for the discos the Nigerian masses ignored the call of the mischievous trade unions ostensibly because some concerned Nigerians in the media and electricity industry came out to make it clear that the discos were not to blame and the Minister of Power lent his learned voice as a SAN to the innocence of the discos on poor electricity supply nation-wide .
Another major revelation also in the media by patriotic Nigerians was that the discos far from being barons of the electricity industry are indeed the paupers of electricity availability in terms of the percentage of returns accruing to them for their distribution function. The discos get only 24% of revenue proceeds while the generating companies get 57 %. Yet no one has blamed the gencos as they are called for exploiting the Nigerian electricity consumers for the huge returns they get . Instead it is the discos distributing electricity not duly generated as and at when due that have been wrongly labelled by trade unions as the exploiter of the Nigerian masses and electricity consumers nation-wide.
After all said and done on this electricity tariffs , it is obvious that there is need to have another look at the increase which was frozen by the Nigerian senate early this year . A leading advocate albeit inadvertently for this urgent review is no other person than the Minister of Power himself . He has said that the new tariffs were not made arbitrarily but are cost reflective and all stakeholders had an input in their calculation and approval by the regulator of the industry , the Nigerian Electricity Regulation Commission .In addition the tariffs are expected to improve liquidity in the sector , deepen the market and improve its infrastructure especially the generation and transmission facilities which have aged considerably and are seriously hampered by overuse , poor maintenance and now vandalisation.
Luckily for Nigerians the Minister of Power is in charge of electricity generation , transmission and distribution and he has the ear of the President on making power or light available to Nigerians .The Minister of Information has already announced that 10,000 MW will be generated by 2019 and he too has had to admit that vandalisation has been a great hindrance in meeting power requirements which should be around 150,000MW GIVEN Nigeria’s present population of 150m people and house holds . At least the Minister of Power has taken the bull by the horn and has stopped the chasing of shadows in the pursuit of the phantom of making the discos the culprit for poor electricity supply – when indeed the challenges and blame are clear and multidimensional , and are in a totally different direction .
Ndubuisi Agah
