***Stage Nigeria Electricity Awareness Walk

By CLEMENT NWOJI, Abuja

The Transmission Company of Nigeria (TCN) and Mainstream Energy Solutions (MESL) have solicited for active involvement of every citizen for sustained development of the Nigeria electricity industry and economy nationwide.

The duo companies represented by the TCN Managing Director/CEO, Usman Gur Mohammed and MESL CEO, Lamu Audu, made the call after a fitness walk in Abuja organised by them in conjunction with other stakeholders tagged “Nigeria Electricity Awareness Walk”.

Transmission Company of Nigeria and Mainstream Energy Solutions Limited in conjunction with other Nigerian Electricity Industry Stakeholders Organized this fitness exercise “Nigeria EleCtricity Awareness Walk”.

The objective was primarily to highlight the need for all Nigerian to see sustainable development and growth of the Nigeria Electricity industry as a national issue just as it highlighted the need to develop non-partisan consensus on the need for sustainable development of the sector.

Mohammed lamented that while most Nigerians agreed that electricity is the leading constraint of development, but there is no consensus on strategy and responsibility to resolve the problems of the sector.

He maintained that most citizens knowingly or ignorantly are daily contributing to the crisis confronting the sector while there is wide perception that only those working directly in the sector are responsible for the sector.

He said even the privatisation and on going reform of the sector have not succeeded some of the sectors problems such as under Capitalization, Liquidity crisis, Regulatory consistency, Constant supply of electricity to Nigerians and Efficient power infrastructure investment planning.

The TCN managing director maintained that when citizens engage in some of the underlisted actions, they are directly or indirectly
contributing to poor development of the sector.

Some of the actions according to him include: Vandalizing power infrastructure, Building under power lines, Frustrating the acquisition of power line right of way (ROW) and Frustrating construction of power infrastructure.

Others include stealing electricity through: illegal connection, Bypassing meter connections, Refusing to pay for electricity Consumed, Failure to make adequate plan for power infrastructure investrnent and Involving in mismanagement of resource meant for the sector, among others.

Mohammed enumerated that Electricity Awareness Walk was targeted at ensuring that every Nigerians understand that he/she has a role in the development of electricity industry; Electricity Industry is key to the sustainable development of the nation and Power infrastructure is expensive and requires extensive planning.

It was also meant to showcase that the present government has done very much to the sector by increasing Transmission Capacity from less than 5,000MW to 8,100MW as at December 2018 (when the last simulation was done); establishing Transmission Rehabilitation and Expansion Program which attracted over $1.66 billion from International Donors; Increased the generation capacity from less than 4,000MW to over 7,500MW; Increase the distribution capacity from about 3,500MW to 5,3 75MW (highest peak in February 2019) and so on.