“What I want to say is that most of the problems we are facing in this country is that we cannot get electricity supplied adequately and efficiently and this is because we have a problem in distribution.
On generation, there is no more problem. We can generate up to 13,006 megawatts but the transmission, those who are taking the electricity supply, can only take 7,000 megawatts.
Even at that, they are not taking the whole 7,000 megawatts but only 4,500 megawatts and then send for distribution.
The distribution (Discos) in turn receives only 3,000 megawatts. Because of technical and commercial reasons, they cannot contain the whole power that has been generated.
“So, we cannot continue like that. If they are ready to continue, fine; but if they are not ready to continue, maybe they should give way to whoever that is ready to come and invest. So, we are asking the government to review and see if they are capable, fine; but if they are not capable, they should give way,”
Discos:
We Will Stop Takeover by Siemens.
•Cite legal agreement with FG.
“If truly the minister said that, it is very unfortunate for Nigeria.
He was wrong and ill-advised. This kind of statement from a Minister will not encourage foreign investors to come to Nigeria. We have a legal agreement with the Federal Government and nobody will close his eyes and allow his $2.4 billion investments taken away. Let us wait and see how he (minister) plans to do it.
“And for the present administration to take Siemens to the bank is very unfortunate for Nigeria – the same Siemens that was involved in bribery scandal in Nigeria. We all know the antecedents of Siemens in Nigeria. Siemens was accused of corruption and was indicted,” he said.
Under the associated Performance Agreements signed by the private investors and the Bureau of Public Enterprises (BPE) in August 2013 before they were handed over the power assets in November 1, 2013, the investors, among other performance indices, covenanted to achieve agreed reduction targets of aggregate technical, commercial and collection losses within a period of five years.
The agreement stipulates that if the Discos failed to achieve the targets, the federal government would take over the assets and pay each of the buyers of the 11 distribution assets only $1.
For the Discos to achieve the targets in the first five years, the agreement also set certain targets for the Federal Government.
However, due to what the investors and the BPE later identified as lack of adequate technical information relating to the state of the power infrastructure at the time of concluding the sale of the assets, the approved loss level in the Performance Agreements, which shall form the basis of determining the performance of the core investors, was not accurate but based on provisional estimates.
Following this development, the BPE extended the five-year tenure during which the core investors were required to fully achieve far-reaching efficiency improvement targets in power supply.
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