Open letter to the President: The need for Presidential task force on power sector, by Kola Amzat
His Excellency, Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu,
President, C-in-C, Federal Republic of Nigeria,
Presidential Villa,
FCT, Abuja.
Your Excellency,
Open Letter to President The Need for Presidential Task Force on Power Sector
Your Excellency, Nigerians profoundly appreciated the wonderful job executed by Taiwo Oyedele led Presidential Task Force on tax reforms,
an historic exercise that produced new Tax Act anchored on the following four pillars: (1) The Nigerian Tax Act, (2)Nigeria Revenue Service (Establishment), (3)Nigeria Tax Administration Act and (4)the Joint Revenue (Establishment) Act, all combine to streamline revenue administration, enhance compliance, strengthen intergovernmental coordination, and reposition the tax system to support inclusiveness.
No wonder, the successful completion of the reform project launched the task reforms chairman to the exalted office of Minister of State for Finance.
On a related note, the recent appointment of the consummate and shrewd banker, and entrepreneur par excellence, Mr. Fola Adeola, the founder of GTB, as the Chairman, Presidential Task Force on Petroleum Sector Reforms by Your Excellence is another bold and patriotic step aimed at providing clarity in the mode of operations and straighten things out in the complex and complicated Nigerian oil & gas sector. And, Nigerians are confident that the Ogun state born highly revered banker and his Task Force members would do a fantastic job that would eventually result in turning the tide of the all-important sector.
Your Excellency, the centre-piece of this correspondence is the ALBATROSS that the Nigerian power sector has become.
It’s evident that the worst performing ministry since Your Excellency assumed power in 2023 is power ministry. Not for lack of resources nor lack of moral and psychological support from the federal authority, but, the ministry is just the WEAKLING of all the federal ministries.
Things just remain at a standstill. The households across the nation are embittered. The corporate community is disenchanted. The manufacturing sector has been run aground. The small scale businesses are totally frustrated, as most of them are totally out of business.
But, it’s gratifying that the Nigerian populace are MAGNANIMOUS and DISCERNING ENOUGH to reckon, appreciate and acknowledge Your Excellency’s bold and life-time reforms in economy, oil & gas, and tax reforms, anchored on unification of multiple exchange rates, removal of oil subsidy, as well as tax reforms ROOTED in four pillars, and BLUNTLY REFUSED TO PANDER to opposition groups that made frantic efforts to mischievously convinced them and other stakeholders of the non-performance of power sector. Of course, this would have created some bottlenecks for Your Excellency’s re-election bid.
Your Excellency, there comes a time that drastic and radical steps have to be considered to ensure and institute normalcy. Sir, that auspicious time is now, particularly as the nation inches to another electoral cycle.
Without much ado, the following are some bottlenecks that have rendered the sector to be weakling in the performance chains:
The Nigerian power sector experiences many broad challenges related to electricity policy enforcement, regulatory uncertainty, gas supply, transmission system constraints, and the major power sector.
THE NATIONAL GRID is characterized by a poor voltage profile of the network and constrained by limited control infrastructure.
Overloaded transmission lines and high technical and non-technical losses are regular features. It is evident that available generated power falls short of the load demand in Nigeria primarily due to ever-increasing energy demand resulting from an increasing population, a development that has make it COMPELLING for diversification into other forms of renewable energy sources to alleviate the inadequacies of power generation
Even, despite the transformations in the power sector, the Transmission and Distribution (T&D) sector is still laden with several challenges ranging from limited transmission capacity of 6000MW, high technical and non–technical losses power losses, vandalism and needless power theft, corruption in power management, ineffective distribution planning method (no redundancy), inaccurate metering system, inadequate, old and dilapidating T&D infrastructure, Poor voltage stability, Inadequate coverage, aged and inadequately trained personnel, Radial Transmission Lines with insufficient redundancies to meet up with N-1 contingency criterion.
In summary, the major problems identified are as underlisted:
· It is funded solely by the Federal government whose resource allocation cannot adequately meet all the requirements;
· It is yet to cover many parts of the country
· Some sections of the grid are outdated with inadequate redundancies as opposed to the required mesh arrangement;
· The Federal government lack the required fund to regular expand, update, modernize and maintain the network;
· There is regular vandalization of the lines, associated with a low level of surveillance and security on all electrical infrastructure;
· The technologies used generally deliver very poor voltage stability and profiles
· The transformers deployed are overloaded in most service areas
· Inadequate of spare parts for urgent maintenance; and
The distribution system is also confronted with a multitude of problems. Access to the grid presently stands at only 40% of the population.
· Even the available electricity capacity is insufficient to meet the existing power needs of less than 40% who have access to the national grid.
· Electricity demand is presently far more than the generation and the transmission
· Poor utilization of existing assets and deferred maintenance;
· Delays in the implementation of new projects;
– Lack of sustained, sound, and the practicable relationship between the Ministry and other stakeholders particularly the JV international oil companies and the Independent Power Producers (IPP), a development that has make it COMPELLING that there MUST be a change of order at the topmost cadre of the ministry.
Your Excellency,a problem known is already half-solved.
This writer hereby humbly suggest the immediate constitution of Presidential Task Force on Power Sector to move, with the aim and objective of putting all the challenges in proper perspective and provide solutions with respect to the followings:
· Moving forward, recommend suitable tested and trusted professionals to take charge in the ministry
· Immediate and long term strategic initiatives to be deployed to arrest continual NATIONAL GRID COLLAPSE
· Alternate investors to take charge of Electricity Distribution Companies. It’s evident that the existing companies across the country have not only refused to align with the government vision for the power sector, they are also exceptionally corrupt.
· The need to step up efforts to generate adequate distribution that would reasonably meet the demands of the teeming population.
KOLA AMZAT(FCA, FCIB)
09077509348,
