Tinubu mulls law to float Power Grid Assets company

…Places six years moratorium on new universities

President Bola Tinubu in a bid to address the problem of power supply, on Wednesday, presented a memo for a bill to establish the Grid Asset Management Company (GAMCO).

Mohammed Idris, Minister of Information and National Orientation, who disclosed this while briefing State House Journalists, after the meeting of the Federal Executive Council (FEC), presided over by the President, said FEC established a committee l comprising the Minister of Power, Minister of State for Gas, Minister of Works, Minister of Finance, the Chairman of the Nigerian Revenue Service, and the Minister of Science and Technology.

This is as FEC also established a mechanism to work out rewards for the civil servants, in order to promote, improved efficiency in our civil service structure.

He disclosed that the committee can co-opt to ensure that they come up with a seamless process of ensuring that this Grid Asset Management Company is set up smoothly.

The move is expected to help tackle the incidents of grid failure and evolve regulatory mechanisms of the national grid.

“Those who are also practising in that sector, those who have invested in that sector, will also have their level of investment looked at.

” The whole idea is to ensure that as Nigeria stabilises its economy, it can improve power generation.

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” We have seen foreign reserves going up, as high as over $50 billion, the highest in over 8 years. Inflation, food inflation is coming down. All aspects of the economy really looking up and improving.

” The President feels that for us to actually industrialise, the power sector must be fixed, and that is why he has taken this initiative of looking at how this Grid Asset Management Company, GAMCO, will be set up to help us to solve the problem of power once and for all, and for all in this country.

“But of course, like I said earlier, this is work in progress. All the enabling parameters will be looked at, the laws will be looked at, a committee has already been put in place so that at the end of the day, this will be presented to the National Assembly for necessary legislation, where necessary.

He revealed that the civil service reform has to do with the implementation of an additional exit benefit scheme, providing up to 100% of employees’ total emoluments for retiring employees of all treasury-funded ministries, departments, and agencies under the Contributory Pension Scheme.

The Minister said the memo is consistent with the provision of section 4(4) of the Pension Reform Act.

” To say it again, there is an approval in place by council for the implementation of an additional exit benefit scheme, providing up to 100% of employees’ total emoluments for retiring employees of treasury-funded ministries, departments, and agencies.

” Now, this is a move that is designed to improve efficiency in our civil service arrangement.”

In a related development , Federal Government has placed a six years Moratorium on the establishment of tertiary institutions across the country.

Olatunji Alausa, the Minister of Education said the move was to improve the quality of education in the country.

Explaining how the memo came about, the Minister said last year a moratorium was placed on private universities, adding that the fresh order was for all tertiary institutions, including polytechnics and colleges of education.

He said Nigeria was no longer worried about access to tertiary education, but on how to improve the quality.

He said, “The memo that was approved by council today is the placement of a Moratorium, six-year moratorium on establishment of new tertiary institutions, universities, polytechnics, and colleges of education. Access is not an issue again in the country. We have lots of tertiary institutions, both public and private. We need to help this private institution be sustainable financially. Just last year, we had 2.3 million Nigerians applied to take JAMB and almost 228 universities had less than 50 candidates apply.

“today we’ve solved the problem of ASUU. Now, more people will go to public universities. What will not happen is that there will be less people going to private universities. So these proprietors have invested a lot of money. We need to make their business sustainable. As we improve quality, in both public and private universities that are available to educate our citizens.”

The Minister also said FEC has approved the reversal of the status of the National Commission for Mass literacy, Adult and non-formal education that was converted to a unit in the Ministry of education earlier on in the life of this administration.

He explained that the President’s agenda was to educate over 50 million Nigerians in the next two to three years to make them digitally literate, “we felt that making a commission that had been in existence for 20 – 30 years a unit will not help this agenda well.

“So we sort the approval of the council to revert it back to a commission which Mr President as the chairman of the Council graciously approved. This is good for our adults and for people that are also illiterate, because the National Mass literacy, Adult and formal education commission has done a yoeman job in educating people in the rural areas.”

According to him, about 56 million nigerians are illiterate and government cannot continue to have a high number of citizens that are illiterate “so the commission deploys a lot of various ways to educate people across the country predominantly in the rural area using Radio, TV, public advocacy and even they also have their schools. So we’re happy today that this commission, the National Commission for Mass Literacy and non-formal education is back as a commission.”