ABUJA (Federal Ministry of Power Report)
The Managing Director of the Transmission Company of Nigeria, Mack Kast has ascribed the significant reduction in system collapse in 2014 to judicious use of available resources tailored towards enhanced evacuation capacity.
Mack Kast said this at the leadership forum organized for the power sector recently, indicating that the TCN has a number of important projects on-going and at various stages of completion. He added that some of the projects will come upstream in the early part of 2015. According to him, TCN is almost ready to evacuate the power to be produced from the two major National Integration Power Projects (NIPPs) in Calabar and Alaoji. Kast noted that the good news from TCN is that in the first quarter of 2015, the two plants would come upstream.
He applauded the contractors and officials working on the projects for ensuring their timely realisation, adding that fund utilization has recorded a big leap to as much as 99.5% in the year under review.
Also speaking at the forum, the Chairman of the Senate Committee on Power, Philip Aduda (Senator ) counseled the new owners of GENCOs and DISCOs to be guided by the maxim which states that to whom much is given, much is expected. “Nigerians expect more from them as they are fully in charge of the sector post privatization. Government cannot fold its hand because despite privatization, the Government still has equity share in the enterprises. A responsible Government must do all it can to deliver the goods,” he stated.
Philip Aduda intensified that investors in the power sector must be encouraged to keep faith with the nation’s vision of uninterrupted power supply. On load shedding in the sector, he described as totally unacceptable the fact that distribution companies have not kept faith with the promised capital injection towards enhancing and building on what was inherited. He tasked them to brace up, in order to build the capacity that would take up all allocated power. This, he observed is the only way to justify the confidence reposed in them by Government to take the sector to higher heights.
The Representative of the Presidential Task Force on Power (PTFP), Simeon Atakuliku in his presentation at the forum identified the inability of the national grid to provide enough power for both industrial and domestic uses, urging all agencies that have the mandate to deliver on power to be at the back of contractors, so that all projects would be realized on time. He also spoke on the need for a more robust move towards solar powered energy source through legislation and incentives, arguing that the vast potentials of the country in the area of solar energy has been grossly underutilized.
