26 April 2014, Abuja – The Presidential Task Force on Power (PTFP) yesterday stated that the total monthly invoiced revenue generated from exchanges in power generated in the electricity sector now averages about N23 billion.
PTFP however noted that the monthly revenue was in relation to Nigeria’s current electricity generation capacity which hovers around 3,500 to 4,000 megawatts (MW).
This came as the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation(NNPC) has expressed its determination to deliver commercial value for the federal government gas revolution agenda in order to ensure efficient gas–to-power, gas-to-industry and sufficient gas for domestic consumption.
The Chairman of PTFP, Beks Dagogo-Jack, disclosed this in Abuja at a roundtable meeting of chief executive officers of various government agencies in the Nigerian oil, gas, power and finance sectors.
The meeting was convened at the instance of the Nigerian Content Development Management Board (NCDMB) to build linkages between critical agencies whose activities have good impacts on the overall economic programme of the federal government especially with regards to building up Nigeria’s in-country capacities across various sectors and creating jobs for Nigerians.
While justifying the federal government’s decision to pay off workers of defunct Power Holding Company of Nigeria (PHCN) as part of its privatisation programme for the power sector, Dagogo-Jack said: “If we were reluctant to pay off labour because of the huge demands they were asking, you have to look at the future.
And when you realise that on a monthly basis, our invoice at the current energy level is in the order of N23 billion, it means that in about 12 to 13 months, the market would have returned that amount of money and so there was no need to stay and fight labour over that money when there is darkness in the country.”
He noted that the country’s power sector requires the level of political will that it garnered in the run-off to the PHCN privatisation to sustain its growth, adding: “Typically, it is very difficult to move from where we are to where want to be. When I hear people talk about constant power supply as soon as we privatise, I tell them that it is a gradual process and it is the same in all of the country’s that have undertaken this sort of reform, we need the level of political will garnered in the privatisation process to sustain the growth of the market now.”
On the other hand, the Executive Secretary of NCDMB, Earnest Nwapa, stated that the meeting was called essentially to build synergy on the implementation local content development across major sectors of Nigeria’s economy.
Nwapa said: “We are public sector agencies working for the same federal government under the same transformation agenda of the government and in our case in the oil and gas industry, we have been able to structure an implementation programme for the local content and make a modest success off it and we felt that to take it to the entire economy, we need to mobilise other key sectors like power, telecoms, insurance.
“That is why we felt that it is important to bring the very tops of these agencies that we call linkage agencies to come together and lets actually sit down to say that if the minister of petroleum can fix this within her industry, why don’t we take it around the entire economy.
“So, it has been very exciting and all the CEOs are committed to transferring the practice of local content into their activities but more importantly, to bring the linkages and let us see and learn from the lessons from the experience of each other especially with what the local content has done for the Nigerian oil and gas industry so that it can permeate the nation’s economy.
“We have not gotten 100 per cent of the local content potential in the oil and gas industry but we can do that when we expand the market share across board. Why should we import pipes for our water supply works but use made in Nigeria pipes for oil and gas operations? We should use the same pipes in the water sector too. We need to take the culture beyond the oil and gas sector so that other sectors can benefit and Nigerians can have jobs.”
– This Day