Minister of Power, Works and Housing, Mr. Babatunde Fashola has disclosed the release of about 300,000 electricity meters which belonged to the defunct Power Holding Company of Nigeria (PHCN) but were locked up in a warehouse because of a lingering legal case against the contract for their procurement. DAVID AGBA reports.
Fashola said in a social media (YouTube) question and answer webinar in Abuja that hopefully this huge volume of meters would be put to good use by the electricity distribution companies (Discos) in the country.
He explained that the contract for the procurement of the meters was awarded by PHCN in 2003 but that legal actions instituted by parties in the contract had stalled their eventual deployment to homes in the 11 electricity distribution networks since then.
According to him, that case had been settled out of court and alternative settlement reached by the parties.
He said this would ensure that the warehouse where the meters are kept would be opened and the meters deployed.
The minister also gave an update on the status of the lingering contractual dispute between Geometric Power Limited, owners of the 180 megawatts (MW) Geometric Aba Power Plant and Enugu Disco over Aba business unit which was reportedly cut off and ceded to Geometric by the federal government in an agreement but which Enugu Disco has also contested.
He said he had succeeded in getting both parties to now sit down and negotiate to settle the dispute, adding that he was hopeful that production of power from the 180MW capacity independent power plant would soon commence.
“There is a contract that was awarded in 2003 for the supply of meters by the old PHCN and it ended up in court and that is for about 13 years.
“We couldn’t supply those meters and people were bickering and fighting, we have taken that case really out of court and we are trying to close it and hopefully take delivery of the meters that have been locked up in the warehouse, I think about 300,000 meters or so. Hopefully, they will be useful for some purpose.”
He stated: “All the Discos today have about six million consumers combined in their database. Are you saying to me that in reality it is only six million people that are using electricity in Nigeria, just imagine the number of people who are using electricity that is not measured or metered and that is free.
“Out of that six million that they have, they have metered about three million inherited and added on, so there is still a gap of close to 50 per cent of that six million that needs to be metered,” he added.
On the Geometric dispute with Enugu Disco, he said: “There is a problem with Aba Disco by Geometric Power Plant, there is 190MW there and they are having issues and they are not talking, we have brought them to start talking because if they close, there is the potential to get 190MW into the grid.”
The minister also took out time to talk about the various opposition to the new retail electricity tariff in the country, and what he is doing to surmount them.
According to him: “There is still a lot of work to do, what I can tell you is that if we can get the cases against the tariff out of the court, the cases out of parliament against the tariff because I believe that businessmen like to deal with their regulator not politicians; they understand business rules and not political rules, then you create stability in the market.
“Businessmen are confident, they know that the game won’t change, they will take position and in that way, you will see first, incremental power. If we don’t have incremental power; moving from 5000MW to 8000MW, 10,000MW, 15,000MW, you can’t equitably distribute what is not enough,” he added.
Speaking on electricity workers’ attitudes to work, as well as constant assets’ vandalism in the sector, Fashola said: “The more power we produce, the more stability we will see, I can guarantee that but I can’t guarantee that people will not go and cut gas lines, I can’t guarantee that people will not go on strike and go and shut down distribution or transmission facilities or the Control Centre in Osogbo because they want some of their colleagues to be kept at work.”
He added: “In shutting down those facilities to protect those people, do those people actually realise how many people they discomfort? Is it profitable to discomfort a whole nation in order to protect 200 people? Because that is what happened in Ikeja Disco. Let us have a rethink about the productivity of those people and what they contribute to the productivity of the country.
“Very highly educated engineers like Makoju, Bath Nnaji have operated in this ministry, it wasn’t because they were not good enough, it was because of some these attitudes, so as far as the technical capacity lies, we have it but it shows you that if it was technical capacity, I know Engineer Makoju can fix things, I know that Nnaji knows everything about gas and power lines better than I do but he can’t go and operate power plants, people were employed to do that, the job of the minister is to coordinate all these things together to move to productivity,” Fashola explained.
