Isaac Anumihe, Abuja
As the frosty relationship among the major players in the power industry worsens, the distribution companies (DisCos) have called for the concession of Transmission Company of Nigeria (TCN) to make it effective.
Speaking to Daily Sun, the Executive Director of Association of Nigerian Electricity Distributors (ANED), Barrister Sunday Oduntan, said that the government did not want to privatise the agency for security reasons but regretted that the agency is being run like NEPA.
According to him, some of the information being released to the public are lies. So, he called on the leadership to stop dishing out lies.
Oduntan said that TCN has never wheeled 8,000mw as record shows that the highest TCN has ever done was 4,557mw.
Although generation can do 8,000mw, the national grid which is under the purview of TCN cannot carry such load.
“They should concession it (TCN). Maybe for security reasons they didn’t want to privatise it but they should concession it.
They are still running it like NEPA. We can’t continue like this. We now have a leader in TCN who goes around the country to lie in public. That is a government official owned by the government and nobody asks him to keep shut. He keeps on dishing out lies. Now, he said that they can wheel 8,000mw when the records show that the highest it has wheeled is 4,557mw on February 7, 2016. TCN has never wheeled 5000mw. I am not talking about generation. When generation peaked at 5,074mw, 5,375mw, they (TCN) could not wheel it. That is what we are saying.
“We have problem at the distribution end. The discos are not efficient enough. We are trying to improve on customer service. You see customers complaining of things that should just be done normally. But they are doing enough of improvement. The last rain that fell here in Abuja a few days ago on Kubwa Road where a vehicle ran into a pole and broke it, within 24 hours they (discos) fixed it and replaced it. So, we have improved but we have not done enough. Efficiency is linked to pricing of any product.
This is what we have been saying all along. We are yet to see anybody coming to say that that is not true. When you talk about efficiency and you want the seller of the product to be efficient the price must be right.
If you are buying bread at N50 and selling bread at N80, the business will collapse” he noted.