Outages halt Senate’s power sector probe

Senators pulled the brakes yesterday on their hearing on power sector funds —no thanks to power outages.

The outages, which occurred eight times within four hours, forced the committee to hurriedly bring the sitting to a close.

The first power failure happened around 2.30 p.m. when the Permanent Secretary, Ministry of Power, Ambassador Godknows Igali, was speaking on behalf of the various electricity generating and distributing companies.

The first outage lasted for 10 minutes, the second 14 minutes, the third five minutes, the fourth, eight minutes and the fifth five minutes.

The sixth, seventh and eight outages lasted for 12 minutes.

Many members of the committee said they suspected sabotage.

When the outage became irritating, a member of the committee rushed out to fetch candles to light the room.

Another brought two rechargeable lamps from his office to illuminate the table where the committee members sat.

A third member brought two long touch lights.

The session was soon turned into a “bedroom conversation” between the senators and their invitees as the microphones malfunctioned due to lack of power.

Committee Chairman Senator Abubakar Kyari, who showed signs of embarrassment, told reporters that the power outage would be investigated.

Kyari said: “We will investigate the incident. We will find out whether it was an act of sabotage.”

Kyari added that the power failure further underscored the relevance of the committee “at this critical time but we shall investigate whether it deliberate or not”.

He faulted newspaper reports of the first day of the panel’s sitting, which said N2.740 trillion was spent on the sector since 1999.

He said the amount only came from what the ministry and the National Integrated Power Projects (NIPP) gave. According to him, money was spent through other sources. The total expenditure would only be clear at the end of the probe, Kyari said.

Apart from members of the ad-hoc committee and the permanent secretary, others at the session were: the Director- General of the Bureau of Public Enterprises (BPE), Benjamin Ezra Dikki, Nigeria Electricity Regulatory Commission ( NERC) Chairman Sam Amadi and some of the Managing Directors of electricity Generating and Distribution Companies (GENCOS) and ( DISCOs).

The managing directors of investors in the sector told the committee that they were running it at great loss monthly because of some challenges.

[ad id=”403656″]The Managing Director of Enugu Distribution Company, Mr. Robert Dickerman, who spoke on behalf of all the Distribution Companies (DENKOs), noted the  industry was being run by them at a deficit of N20 billion monthly.

He said part of their challenge was that over 50 per cent of electricity consumers are not metered; over 30 per cent are not on the billing system of the service providers.

Dickerman added that the N100 billion subsidy the Federal Government was supposed to pay the service providers through the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) had not been paid.

The Chief Executive Officer of the Ibadan Electricity Generating Company, Adeoye Fagbembi, who spoke on behalf of the six GENCOs noted that their losses had been a big challenge to them.

He also listed non-payment of the N100 billion subsidy promised by the Federal Government as part of their challenge.

But the BPE Director- General, Benjamin Dikki, said the CBN had paid N5 billion out of the N100 billion.

The BPE boss agreed that the investors must be paid to keep the sector afloat.

He noted that the losses were envisaged at initial stages as embedded in the performance agreement reached with the investors, hence the subsidy.

Dikki said that the payment of subsidy became necessary to augment the power loss by the investors due to no fault of theirs.

He said that distribution companies were losing between 40 to 60 per cent of power in the course of transmission due to dilapidated power equipment.

Kyari asked the BPE boss to tell the committee how much the 10 NIPP thermal stations were sold, following the disclosure by the NIPP that the Federal Government invested $8.23 billion in the NIPP.

He said the committee would want to know whether the plants were undervalued.

The same question was repeated by three members of the committee but the BPE chairman evaded it.

Dikki rather directed members of the committee to the voluminous document BPE submitted to find out how much the plants were sold.

He insisted that revenue shortfall was a reality, saying companies which generate power should be paid.

Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission (NERC) Chairman Sam Amadi said it was not true that the Transmission Company of Nigeria (TCN)will soon be privatised.

Amadi noted that the government had no such plan because of the sensitivity of that particular component of the sector.

The BPE was mandated to submit to the committee a comprehensive report on the Yola DISCO that forced the investor to declare a force majeur.