…As BPE raises hope of improved power supply
By Paul Effiong, Abuja
The House of Representatives Ad-hoc Committee investigating expenditure in Nigeria’s power Sector has directed the Bureau of Public Enterprises, BPE, to appear before it alongside core investors in the power Sector over electricity supply challenges in the country.
Chairman of the Committee, Hon. Ibrahim Al-Mustapha Aliyu gave the directive after the appearance and submission by the Director General, DG, Bureau of Public Enterprises (BPE), Mr Ayodeji Gbeleyi at continuation of the investigative hearing held by the Committee on Thursday.
He said that, the Committee will invite the co-investors through the BPE adding that, they need to explain things to the Committee and Nigerians as a responsibility.
He said, “And I must say, DG, you are competent in all respects. Because some people will start struggling to say that they are not there, you understand, but government is continuous. You own up to the whole thing. So we need to see these co-investors, they need to be here. Because we relied on their capacity and capability up in issue. To give them this discourse and discourse, right? We need them.
“So take note, I don’t know when these co-investors, can they come before 10th? Today is 4th, and today is Thursday, and we have barely how many working days, run down to holidays. Some of them may have travel, but when we get the notice. Before this committee on the 15th of December, the letters will go out”.
Earlier, the Chairman noted that, the president himself is doing his best to see that some settlements are done to make things better adding that, the Committee wants to get to the root of the matter, resolve it, and then we move forward.
Hon. Aliyu said, “I’m happy that I have mentioned that there is a considerable improvement from 1999 or 2000, because the generation there is just about 1500 MW altogether for the whole country, and now we are talking about 10,600 installed capacity. We hope that the actual generation may be 10,000 MW. We only will 8,000 and only distribute 4,000.
“So in between, that is the challenge. Maybe we need to work hard to resolve. You have not also told us what arrangements are in place from the BPE on the transmission.
“Since after the Canadian firm left, the transmission service charge and other things may not be too strong enough to service the transmission requirement of the country. That’s why maybe perhaps there has been a great collapse due to the very old installations that can easily give way under first measure”.
In his submission, the DG BPE, Mr Ayodeji Gbeleyi informed the Committee that at the time of privatisation, Kainji and Jebba hydro power plants have a combined output of about 600 MW of power.
He however stated that, they now deliver 1,100 MW of power to the grid out of about an average of 5,500 MW per day. Which he said was almost 20% from just one operator which he said was one of the impacts that Nigerians have seen.
He added, “At the time of privatisation, Egbi power plant has six turbines, each of them 220 MW, making a total of 1,320 MW. At the time of privatisation, only two of those power plants were operational. Today, all the six turbines are firing and ready to dispatch power to the grid.
“It’s one of the major providers of power to the grid, dispatching any figure between 680 to 900 MW of power, depending on grid capacity, when the grid can offtake that power. So there is a mixed grid. Even when we talk about the discourse, sir, the discourse that we knew, or the power holding company that we knew yesterday, is not operating at the same level as the discourse today”.
Mr Gbeleyi noted the performance was more than the yesteryears of Power Holding Company of Nigeria, PHCN.
The DG BPE said, “They may not be where we want them to be, but trust me, sir, we are beginning to see a turnaround in the sector. And since we did the cost-reflective tariff adjustment for band A in April of 2023, a number of the discourses that were unprofitable are already becoming profitable.
“What we are trying to do at BPP is also to improve governance at the DisCos level so that we minimise leakages in the operation in a manner that the cash flow they generate are also utilised or invested back in the network in a manner that we can deliver reliable, safe, and affordable electricity to Nigerians. And that’s our focus, you know, as things stand. So we see it as a cup that is half full as against a cup that is half empty.
“All critical stakeholders are working hard in a manner that we continue to improve on the overall performance of the sector. Not necessarily where we want to be, but we believe that with consistent effort and collaboration of all key stakeholders, we’ll see a much more improved power sector. Suffice to say, sir, that including some of the other things we’ve talked about before, government has an obligation to support the sector.
“As of December, as a government, NBET was owing N4 trillion to that sector. If you put that in context, the average revenue for 2024, total industry revenue, was N1.7 trillion. This year, we are thinking we’ll close this month at about N2.3 trillion which means that…Market system operations, market settlement, as well as system planning.
“That has helped to create more focus for transmission service provider in terms of dealing with the core engineering components of our grid, of the grid architecture. Whereas these guys are now focused on the back-end issues, market settlement and all of that.
“And we are beginning to see more stability on the grid. This year, unlike last year where we recorded almost 20 grid disturbances, this year we’ve seen maybe less than three or so, and not all those prolonged situations. Even as recent as about a month ago, an exercise we have been attempting to achieve in the last 13 years, which is to synchronise Nigeria’s power pool into the West African power pool of 14 other countries in ECOWAS, was achieved by NISO”.
