Lucky Obukohwo, Reporting
The Minister of Power, Adebayo Adelabu, has threatened to revoke the licences of companies whose performances fall below standard, saying that he would rather move for commercialisation than privatisation.
He made the threat at the Nigeria Electricity Supply Industry (NESI) Market Participants and Stakeholder Roundtable in Abuja.
Adebayo said that the government will do performance assessment of all the distribution companies (DisCos) and all the generation companies (GenCos) and any of them that fails the strait test will be left behind.
The minister said that assessment will be based on whether they have technical capacities, financial capabilities and how much investment they have made; how much improvement they have made to the infrastructure? Which of the Aggregate Technical and Commercial (AT&C) losses they have reduced.
“And I made mention that 10 years down the line, the licences are expiring and it’s time for renewal. Renewal is not automatic. Any of the privatised companies that has not lived up to expectation will not have its licence renewed. We have to know whether you have complied with the terms and conditions of the licence you have been given.
“We look at the technical capacities of the GenCos and the DisCos. We will look at the financial capabilities of the DisCos. How much investment have you made since you got this licence? How much improvement have you made to the infrastructure? Which of the AT&C losses have you reduced based on the agreement when you were given these licences? These are the very serious conversations we need to have with the private sector operators at the distribution and the generating company level” Adebayo said.
He lamented that the state of things in the electricity supply industry is quite intolerable and the objectives of the the privatisation have not been met.
To this extent, he canvassed for commercialisation instead of privatisation
“The state of things in the Nigerian electricity supply industry (NESI) years after privatisation is still unacceptable
“The question to ask ourselves is whether we have achieved the objectives of privatisation on the grading of zero to 100? What is our score? Personally, I will say No which is why it’s pertinent for all the industry players, all the stakeholders to have a roundtable to discuss what are the reasons responsible for this. And what are the things we need to do to achieve the objectives of privatisation?” Adebayo, added.