25-Day Maintenance Necessary, Lagosians To Get Electricity 5pm Daily – Discos

Amid the ongoing maintenance of power, the Chief Executive Officer of the Association of Nigerian Electricity Distributors (ANED), Sunday Oduntan, has assured Lagosians of electricity availability during the 25-day maintenance by the Transmission Company of Nigeria (TCN). He also speaks on other sundry issues in the sector.

Excerpts:

Talk to us about the 25-day power outage.

It’s not a blackout. This is what happens all over the world. In western countries like the UK, Europe and America, periodic plant maintenance is not strange. Your car must be due for servicing. I’ll use the UK as an example because I lived there for a long time. If we have enough power generation in the country, we then have extra or reserve.

As a country, we are hovering between 5,000 and 6000 megawatts right now, but our need is about 30,000. Assuming we have about 35,000 megawatts and we need 30,000. That means we have a reserve. So, once there is a need to do maintenance in an area or a state, we just switch to that reserve. Members of the public will not even be aware that something is going on.

But in our case, it is because what we have is not enough. And now, we want to switch off part of what is not enough to do an update to get a better situation for the sector.

What the Transmission Company of Nigeria is trying to do is to ensure that they maintain this line, which people call high-tension cable. They are the transporters of electricity from the point of generation to the point of distribution. Without them, we cannot supply electricity to members of the public. Without them, the producer of the electricity cannot get it to the end-users.

Whenever they need to do this maintenance, we should have an option, but what we have now is an option between them doing this maintenance or allowing high-tension cables to collapse, which is dangerous. The maintenance now is from the 28th of July to the 21st of August, between 8 am and 5 pm daily.



What’s the assurance that the electricity supply will be restored at 5 pm daily?

We need to start believing in our institution. I’m not a TCN person. I’m a spokesman for the discos, but I can tell you for a fact that what they are trying to do has been planned over a long period, and they will surely keep to it. They know exactly what they need to do, and this is why it is taking this long. Every stakeholder in the power sector is working together, beginning with our regulators. All these things are planned, well-coordinated, and there’s a lot of collaboration.

Some people do not have meters, who have applied under the free meter initiative, but some of the meters were probably diverted. What happens to those people now?

We have gone through three or four schemes of metering in the last couple of years. The current situation is that we have not been able to fill the metering gap. Some people are still not metered, some meters have been made available today than it was two years ago, but that is not to say that we are there.

The privatisation of the Nigerian power sector is a journey on its own, and it’s a very long journey. So, sometimes you have to take one step after the other. I’m not saying it’s a perfect system. I’m not saying we’re doing well enough. What I’m saying is that if everybody plays their part, from governments to service providers to customers, the end-users, then things will become better with time. So, I do recognise the fact that there are metering issues. Although technical glitches are an issue that exists, efforts are being made continuously to improve them.

Some would argue that what you only have are comments because you are not recognised by the constitution.

I am recognised by law, so when you say I’m not recognised by the constitution, when you have an association or a body that’s duly registered, that is recognised by law.

Some people believe that Band A should be scrapped because it is exploitative. How is that conversation currently ongoing?

The Electricity Act of 2023, as amended, is very clear. And that Act intends to enable states to have that independence to be able to generate, transmit, and distribute their electricity. That will increase the quantum of electricity and the quality of service. It will enable us as a country, as a nation, to have more electricity.

We’re in transition and at an early stage, until each of those states can do all of this within the boundaries of their states. That’s when they have 100% independence to charge or to set the tariff that they like.

For instance, Enugu or Ogun states can decide to say we are generating our electricity, transmitting it within the state, and in doing so, we want to do it for 2 naira per kilo. That’s their state; they have the right to do that. But the moment Ogun State goes outside the boundary to take electricity across the boundary, then it becomes something else.

What it becomes is that you cannot put a price tag on somebody else’s product. Band A is the highest tariff in Nigeria, 209 naira per kilowatt. It is lower than anywhere in West Africa. Check Ghana, Senegal, and The Gambia, you will see that what we’re paying here is still lower than others, but that aside, the Band A tariff is a tariff without a subsidy. The government has removed subsidies from Band A.

Source: Channels TV | Continue to Full Story…