Whatever pitch Power Minister Adebayo Adelabu is making for the electricity value chain, he should first glimpse own ministerial report card.
Otherwise, he might just end up as the lousy salesman that crashed the market: no matter his golden pitch. His sales persona would fire absolutely no confidence!
No, this is no wholesale ad hominem dismissal of the message because you have a beef with the messenger. It’s just perception, many times, clearer than reality.
Now, the electricity chain is a complex continuum — if not outright conundrum: from generation companies (GenCos), to the Transmission Company of Nigeria (TCN), and then the distribution companies (DisCos), which interface with the ever-harried consumer, even if DisCos hardly have any grip on what they hawk.
As in any relay race, if a leg drops the baton, or strays into another lane, the entire team is cooked! That’s a fitting metaphor for Nigeria’s ever-shambolic electricity supply system.
Still, before Minister Adelabu took over, many households — and Ripples’ is a living witness — had at least 16 hours a day; at times, 20 hours, and — old glory! — that rare — very rare — 24 hours power paradise, for the odd day or two!
Now, this was by no means universal. Lagos — where Ripples lives — is the vortex of electricity demand, to which supply must gravitate.
It’s also an up-market hub where Ikeja Electric Plc (I.E.) and Eko DisCo (the two that play in that business turf) are likelier to get paid, with relative ease.
Even then, the Lagos market is segmented — with the wealthier districts that can pay higher tariffs corralling higher daily hours of electricity.
That situation lasted till October 2023, became fleeting by November 2023 and well neigh vanished by December! By January 2024, it had become happy new year, sad, old darkness, with barely any electricity beyond 6 pm in many areas!
Worse: there is often no rime or reason to this shambolic supply.
So, you can imagine customers’ irritation at a Power minister, without any tangible explanations for the dip, coming out to pipe the old tune of “cost-reflective tariffs”! How insensate!
To be sure, the push for cost-reflective tariffs is logical. It’s all about prompt payment for power generated, transmitted, distributed and consumed, at each point on the value chain. It’s about the only way to keep the market humming and all the traders happy.
So, certainly the current power glitch is because traders, along the electricity value chain, are not promptly paying for “wares” — or even at all? If that is so, is it not only a matter of time before the entire chain collapses?
Still, how did the minister before Adelabu juggle the industry balls, to achieve the relative stability that vanished by November ending 2023?
By the way, that stability, against all odds, tried to build the market; and also prep the consumer — moving from utility as social service to utility as core commodity that must be paid for — that cost reflective tariffs are the logical end the power yo-yo.
But why did it suddenly collapse — and at the minister’s virtual arrival?
The optics just rankled: Minister Adelabu haranguing harried consumers to pay more for electricity they were not even convinced was there!
Yet, these are systemic challenges, which management must tax the ingenuity of any Power minister, if the government must crack the Power conundrum.
For starters, the Nigerian Electricity Supply Industry (NESI) is a long chain, over which sits the Federal Ministry of Power.
The others in the chain are: Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission (NERC), the industry regulators; GenCos, TCN, DisCos, Nigerian Bulk Electricity Trading Plc (NBET: call it the wholesale dealer, if you will); Gas Aggregator Company of Nigeria — the gas link is critical, since most of the GenCo plants are fired by gas) — and the Nigerian Electricity Management Service Agency (NEMSA).
Now, without conflating personal daring with deep-seated systemic challenges, how has the minister somewhat integrated these outfits into his own policy vision, knowing that without efficient and effective power, President Bola Tinubu’s ambitious re-industrialization policy — an integral part of which is agricultural processing — is as good as belching gas?
Besides, shouldn’t all the Adelabu public talk about the Federal Government either pronto paying the subsidy on electricity, or allowing cost-reflective tariffs, be inside stuff for inter-ministry/agency memos, in files which “keep our secrets, secret”?
If that had been so, the minister wouldn’t have handed the foes of the government he serves the added propaganda oomph of alleged “wickedness” to remove electricity subsidy, just as it did on petrol, to further inflict pains on the people — empty, hare-brained hysteria to be sure!
That was dissonance that grated — and grated badly.
Aside, what efforts has the minister made to ensure NERC pressures DisCos to clean up their questionable accounting systems?
The other day, the Abuja Electricity Distribution Company (AEDC) claimed Aso Rock Villa owed it N923. 9 million. But after “reconciliation”, the debt plummeted to N342 million — almost a third of the original claim.
Now, if AEDC could slap such a flabby bill on the nation’s number 1 “household”, what other voodoo bills do other DisCos, as routine, slap on millions of other nameless Nigerian households?
Besides, what inter-ministry/agency lobbies has the Power ministry done to rally other government outfits, including military facilities, to settle own jumbo debts to DisCos, even if you’d always put a question mark on the fidelity of DisCo billings?
If most of these bills are defrayed, wouldn’t the DisCos have enough cash to promptly pay NBET, which can settle others in the value chain so that GenCos, for instance, can pay for gas, the prime driver of their turbines?
The other day, “Hardball”, The Nation’s back-page column (see “I.E.: authority stealing?: February 5), reported how, citing prepaid meter No. 45702775466, I.E. “allocated” 0.9 kW — almost zero — for a N20, 000 top-up token that should have fetched no less than 371.8 kW back then?
What has the NERC done to banish — and punish — such sharp practices, beyond spasmodic slaps on the wrist that the thieving DisCos often brush off en route to their next big steal?
And if NERC can’t adequately sanction sharp practices, how do you grow the market on false accounting and flabby billing, to attain that cherished threshold of cost-reflective tariffs?
Let the Power minister do these basic industry homework before pushing for cost-reflective tariffs. If he fails to do so, he’d only hit a brick wall.
Besides, in this high season of high-octane blame games, his ministerial report card would continue to seem as one of the weakest links in the Tinubu presidential chain. That’s a nest of thorns no minister can enjoy — or even endure.
