*Blames poor budgeting, procurement issues for sector under-performance
Oscarline Onwuemenyi
26 August 2015, Sweetcrude, Abuja – The Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission, NERC, has announced plans to increase electricity generation to about 6,000 megawatts in the next few months.
The Chairman of NERC, Dr. Sam Amadi, who made the announcement at a two-day workshop organised for stakeholders in the sector to chart a way forward, in Abuja, lamented that performance management and poor project management were major challenges affecting the power sector in the country.
“We saw in June this year, how generation capacity went as low as 2000mw, but later came up to 4,700mw.
“We set a benchmark of at least 5000mw but today we are at 5000mw or more hoping to reach 6000mw before December,’’ he said.
He said distribution, transmission and generation companies were faced with challenges, hence the need for the commission to organise the workshop to find ways of surmounting these problems.
He pointed out that another challenge facing the sector was poor or misplaced procurement, whereby officials procured equipment or awarded contracts that were not delivered.
Amadi added poor budgeting had also posed a major challenge in the power sector.
“For instance, if TCN (Transmission Company of Nigeria) proposed a budget of N50 billion but government approved N30 billion and releases only N10 billion it will stall the implementation of projects in the sector.
“There is nowhere in the world where projects can be completed with this type of budget provision,’’ he said.
Meanwhile, the NERC boss charged the generation and transmission companies to work hard to improve their services and provide adequate power to Nigerians.
He said the essence of the workshop was to ensure that stakeholders in the industry reinforced their technical capacity on the grid in order to accommodate more energy.
Amadi said the workshop was to brainstorm with stakeholders by showing them the template designed by NERC to enable them deliver effectively and on time.