Federal Government Approves N600 Billion For Power Sector Market

MD TCN, Usman Gur Mohammed

The Federal Government has approved the sum of N600 Billion for injection into power sector market mainly for payments for the shortfall in monthly invoices.

This is even as the Transmission Company of Nigeria (TCN) has assured that everything possible had to be done to move the power sector market to the level that the communication sector had advanced.

These indications emerged at the opening session of the power sector market operator’s participants/Key stakeholders 2019 third quarter interactive forum organised by Market Operator on Wednesday. The theme of the forum was “Rules and compliance for Nigeria Electricity market development and sustenance”.

The Managing Director of the Transmission Company of Nigeria (TCN), Usman Gur Mohammed, in an opening remarks maintained that Government cannot substantially invest in the power sector, adding that the responsibility is on the stakeholders/participants to ensure that the market works.

He said: “In reality, market has to be driven by rules and regulations and people have to comply with rules and regulations, there has to be sanctions for poor performance and reward for performance and extraordinary performance. If a market is existing that any body who does not perform can get away with it, then that market cannot grow. But our believe is that this power sector market should grow by all means.

He further cited that presently among the policy makers there are three groups and each one of them are very powerful.

He said: There is group that believes that the power sector reform has failed, then since it has failed Government should council it.
There is group that says let’s leave the market the way it is and with time , everything is going to work. That is, let’s try and patch it and see may be it can work later. There is group that says we need to do certain things to make the market working because it is not working.

“So, to save the market, we have to bring some level of discipline so that those people who are saying the market is not working and so let’s cancel it will not have upper hand. You know they very powerful.

“But let me tell you, it is true through our experience in the last four years that the government cannot substantially invest in the power sector. So, we have to do something to ensure that the market works. That’s exactly what we did because any organization or association that doesn’t obey rules, there is no way such organization can succeed.

“By the recent applications of market rules by the market operator, it has made it possible that even those who don’t read the market rules are now reading it. I can tell you that there are many people in the market who are supposed to know the rules who does not the understand rules including participants.”

The TCN managing director further gave insights into what is currently being done to improve the power sector market operations. He said: “Our intention is to midwife the industry in such a way that Transmission Company of Nigeria (TCN) probably, will cease to exist and then we will have TSP and ISO. The market operator will be under ISO. Everything that will lead to that separation is what I’m doing everyday

“But there is no way we can successfully have complete separation of the TSP and ISO conveniently without having a functional SCADA. We are doing everything to have that. We have just finished the tender for the critical communications backbone for the fixing of fibre optic in those areas that have no fibre.

“We have decided to have broad knowledge on SCADA. We are going to train our staff to know how to implement SCADA not that they will be mere followers where another person will come to implement it otherwise we will fail again.

“We have decided to train 15 of our staff but each of them is to sign a bond that they will not leave TCN until after five years because we are going to spend significant amount of money in training them. Five of them will be trained on SCADA software, Five for hardware and five for Communications.”

Mohammed assured that all the problems in the Transmission control rooms will be resolved and redesign regional control rooms for efficiency.

In an interview with Journalists, the Market Operator, Engr. Edmund A. Eje said that the government has been intervening with financial supports in the market. He cited that in 2014/15 and 2017, the government intervened with N213 billion and N701 Billon respectively.

He also said presently the government has approved N600 billion for payment for the shortfall in monthly invoices.