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No regrets in power sector privatisation – FG

By BusinessNews Staff on May 9, 2014

Despite the prevailing erratic supply of electricity in most parts of Nigeria six months after the sector was privatised, the Federal Government on Thursday declared that it had no regrets for handing over the industry to private investors.

The government also noted that it would ensure that 1.5million Nigerian households had access to electricity annually.

This, it said, was in order to achieve 75 per cent access to power in the country by the year 2020.

Representing the Federal Government at a power forum in Abuja, the Permanent Secretary, Federal Ministry of Power, Mr. Godknows Igali, said there was every reason to celebrate the privatisation of the sector.

He said, “We have every reason to celebrate the success of the process. We had no other way to go because this is a sector that was bedevilled by inefficiencies and Nigerians had less power supply. But with the privatisation, government has been subsidised.

“As permanent secretary in the Federal Ministry of Power, I came in and we were paying about N10bn as salaries to thousands of workers, yet Nigerians didn’t have power. The good news is that today everything we set out to achieve has been achieved.

“The credibility, dexterity and the ability of the private sector to bring in new managerial skills and internationalisation have improved the sector. So we have nothing to regret and today we can see the Independent Power Plants coming up to boost the sector.”

Asked to state when the erratic power situation in the country would stabilise, Igali said the government was working hard to ensure that “in a few months time, electricity supply to consumers will normalise.”

Earlier in his address, the Minister of Power, Prof. Chinedu Nebo, said access to electricity in Nigeria was still below expectation.

He said, “In Nigeria, access to electricity is way below 50 per cent with about 30million Nigerian households without electricity. I think it is important to mention all this so that we begin to see why Nigeria is a veritable location for investment in the electricity sector.

“In order to meet the immediate electricity demand in Nigeria, we need to quadruple what we currently generate and make sure it continues to grow. When you compare South Africa, a country that is about one quarter the population of Nigeria, and is generating 40,000MW, the implications are that for us to be at par with South Africa, Nigeria needs to generate forty times more power than we are generating today. That means we need 160,000MW just to be at par with South Africa.”

[Punch]

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