We can’t stop lamenting the parlous state of electricity generation, distribution and transmission in Africa’s most influential country. On Sunday, April 21, rainstorm did havoc to power installations around the industrial zone of Ota, Ogun State. Electricity poles fell and mangled cable littered the expressway from Sango, onward Ota, Canaanland.
This highway leads to the heartland of Ogun West and the border town of Idi Iroko. Here, you have a number of manufacturing operations, schools, hospitals, cold rooms and a host of SMEs, plying their trade.
IBEDC, like other failed DisCos, shied from investing in repairs of damaged installations from which they collected tariffs. The business of installation and repairs of electricity facilities was left to Community Development Associations. In Nigeria’s financial crime scene, connected persons obtain huge loans, which they purport to invest, either in aviation, fuel importation, publishing, oil and gas, electricity etc. Sometimes the investments don’t survive and the loans are never recovered. When they’re charged to court, they make several pleas and are allowed to roam. AMCON is dragged in while the debtors join politics. Some of them are in the National Assembly, making laws for law-abiding citizens.
The model that has sustained telecommunications should be copied for the electricity sector. In the case of telecoms, the terrain was virgin for the investors apart from those who inherited NITEL. Despite the multiplicity of taxes and the huge investment in diesel, the telecoms sector is thriving. The numbers are simply embarrassing for Africa’s leading economy, and if the country is to be taken seriously in places where president Tinubu is clamouring for investors, then the style of regulation must change. And that seriousness lies within the authority of the National Assembly to invoke.
How the new tariff will be reversed and whether the lawmakers could summon the balls to enforce their order is a different matter. At least, they have earned temporary accolade in the public square. When they enter into closed-door sessions they could change their minds. Meanwhile, a certain electricity generation company posted in January 2024,N83 billion revenue, and an operating profit increase of 110 percent.The power firm made N31.1 billion profit in 2023, against the N14.8 billion it recorded the previous year. If that is the prevailing average in the sector, it means business is good.
There is growing concern after prosecutors in the Democratic Republic of Congo opened a judicial inquiry against Cardinal Fridolin Ambongo of Kinshasa for seditious comments.
Discos. NERC Electricity Supply
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