By Stella Odueme
A renowned expert in the power sector, Engr Isa Musa, has said that the privatization of the sector only changed the dimensions of the challenges in the sector of the economy.
He pointed this out in a paper titled ‘Indepth Analysis of Challenges and Professional Solutions to the Stunted Growth of Nigeria’s Power Sector’ he delivered recently.
According to him, “it is evident that the privatization model used by the government was full of erroneous assumptions.
“For example, that there would be revenue-sufficient tariffs, stable transmission infrastructure, an efficient bulk trader, government institutions would pay their electricity bills, and the distribution companies would be financially viable.”
He went further to say that, “so within a very short period of time, the flaws in the privatization model became more apparent.
“For example, just after the first five years of unbundling and partial privatisation, generation capacity dropped by about 33 per cent and only 23 per cent of the cost of electricity production could be recovered.”
Engr. Musa also highlighted some of the benefits of the new Electricity Act 2003 signed by President Bola Ahmed Tinubu which empowers states, companies and individuals to generate, transmit, and distribute electricity.
“The new Electricity Act 2023 can be a single panacea for all the power problems we have in the country today,” he noted.
He said with effective implementation, “lack of integrated and comprehensive energy policy, pieces of legislations, procedures and directives characterised by waste would be things of the past@.
He expressed hope that with the new Act, “there are positive indicators that show within a couple of years or more, the aggregated generation in the country would cross over the celebrated figure of 4000MW much talked about”.
