AFRICA

Senate Vows Legislative Action on N1.6 Trillion Debt Owed to Egbin Power Plc

As part of its ongoing review of the performance of privatised government assets, including power companies, the Senate on Wednesday, promised to take necessary legislative steps to resolve the N1.6 trillion debt owed Egbin Power Plc by the federal government.

That was as it emerged that the federal government had spent about N8.8 billion to repair and put into functional use 128 transmission towers vandalised across the country from January 2024 till date.

Transmission Company of Nigeria (TCN) said the Nigeria Police aided and abetted suspected vandals, who made away with power infrastructure materials.

However, the senate also promised to help address other challenges confronting power companies in the country, including access to foreign exchange (FX), gas supply, incessant grid collapses, and sabotage.

Deputy Chairman of the Senate Committee on Privatisation and Commercialisation, Senator Emmanuel Udende, made the promise yesterday when he led a delegation of the committee on an oversight visit to Egbin Power plant in Ikorodu, Lagos State.

As a committee responsible for overseeing the Bureau of Public Enterprise (BPE) and all the privatised government assets, Udende said they had been visiting the companies and assets to ascertain their performance post-privatisation, with a view to improving them.

Briefing journalists after the session with Egbin’s management, he stated that government owed Egbin a whopping N1.6 trillion, an issue he said the senate needed to look into to find a lasting solution.

Udende stated, “We go around to see for ourselves the performance of these assets since privatisation. We’ve been to some of them. We’ve been briefed about the performance of Egbin Power Plc and we are quite impressed with this particular company. The resilience shown by the management of this company is quite commendable.

“I’m quite impressed with what they have done. They are owed a very huge sum of money, N1.6 trillion. It’s quite huge and they are still operating. I like that spirit. I’m quite impressed that this debt is being owed and yet they are operating.

“I wonder how. I will go back once we get the full report. We’ll look at what we can do to ameliorate that situation.

“When we get back, we’ll take a look at it. We are legislators. We can either come by way of motion or legislation. We’ll look at it holistically. We can also invite that company with BPE. We’ll get solutions. We are legislators.”

Udende said Egbin and other power plants faced challenges such as vandalism, inconsistency of the grid, gas supply, and forex constraints, assuring that the committee would come up with a holistic solution to the issues.

Chief Executive Officer of Egbin Power Plc, Mr. Mokhtar Bounour, revealed that the company had been in constant interaction with relevant stakeholders in the Nigerian power sector, including the legislators, in order to improve the sector.

Bounour reaffirmed the company’s commitment to the stability of the grid and the growth of the country’s economy. He said the power industry in general was in need of support to overcome the challenges that generation and distribution companies faced.

He listed access to forex, huge unpaid debt, vandalism that affected grid stability, as well as access to gas at the right domestic price as major issues confronting the Generation Companies (Gencos).

“So all these have to be on the table and we hope that they (the senate committee) can help us in escalating this,” Bounour said.

Director at Egbin Power Plc, Mr. Kola Adesina, called for a whole-of-community approach to fish out vandals involved in destroying power equipment in the country, in order to guarantee stability of the national grid.

Adesina also called for increased investment inflow into the sector. He said there was need for a concerted community-based conversation on tackling issues of vandalism and energy theft in the country.

“Once the security people start to do something in that regard, we need to make it a bottom-up approach,” Adesina said.

“Somehow, midway, we can now have a consensual approach to this. It’s a value system thing and it needs to be addressed frontally,” he added.

He commended the federal government for its willingness to listen to operators in the sector and take act to address their challenges.

Meanwhile, the federal government spent about N8.8 billion to repair and put into functional use 128 transmission towers vandalised across the country from January 2024 till date. Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer of TCN, Mr. Suleiman Abdulaziz, disclosed this at the Quarterly Power Sector Working Group meeting in Abuja, according to a statement by Special Adviser to the Minister of Power on Strategic Communication and Media Relations, Mr. Bolaji Tunji.

Abdulaziz, who was represented by Executive Director, Transmission Service Provider (TSO) of TCN, Olugbenga Ajiboye, said between January 13, 2024 and now, 128 transmission towers had been destroyed either by vandals or bandits across the country.

He lamented that when the vandals were apprehended and handed over to the police for prosecution, they were easily let off the hook and allowed to return to the communities to continue with the criminal act.

The TCN boss recounted, “As I talk to you today, 128 of our towers have been destroyed by either vandals or bandits. Till date, we have spent about N8.8 billion, by our estimation, to put them back to full and functional use. It is so sad that each time the vandals were caught and taken to the police for prosecution, the police would incident them for theft, instead of vandalism, and they will be bailed.

“If they are charged with vandalism, they cannot be bailed, but this is where we are. So many of them have been arrested, but each time, they will be bailed because police often incident their cases as that of theft.

“When the Shiroro-Mando-Kaduna towers were destroyed, we had to get the full military escorts for our contractors to get the transmission lines and towers restored and in some cases, they would tell us that we could only work for two hours in some days.

“In some instances, they would even tell us that it was not safe to move there. How do we get out of this? How can we deliver electricity to Nigerians under these terrible circumstances? These are part of the challenges we are facing in the power sector.”

Minister of Power, Chief Adebayo Adelabu, disclosed that the federal government was working in collaboration with the World Bank and African Development Bank (AfDB) to make electricity available to 50 million Nigerians by the year 2030.

Represented at the quarterly meeting by his Chief Technical Adviser, Mr. Adedayo Olowoniyi, Adelabu said the power ministry was collaborating with its finance counterpart to get achieve that.

The minister said, “The Mission 300 is being driven by the World Bank and the African Development Bank and it is a project that will provide electricity to 300 million Africans and Nigeria will benefit 50 million from this. Nigeria has a large population that is without electricity and this is a great opportunity for us to be part of this process.

“The compact document will be signed by our President Bola Ahmed Tinubu in Tanzania in January, 2025. We worked extensively with World Bank, the AfDB and the Ministry of Finance to develop the document with all the countries that will be participating in it.

“The most important thing is that we have to drive the process by ourselves through the private and public sector participation. We will do it through the solar form system, mini and micro grid, grid extension and connection.”

Based on Nigeria’s lean resources, Adelabu said it was not feasible to extend the grid to all Nigerians, stating that funding challenge and lack of commercially viability make that difficult.

Peter Uzoho