FG admits failing on short-term power delivery

The Federal Government has said that it is off track in meeting short term power delivery, as contained in the Power Sector Reform Roadmap, which was launched by President Goodluck Ebele Jonathan in August last year.
The Minister of Power, Prof. Bath Nnaji, told journalists in Lagos on Friday that the failure to meet the target is as a result of the failure to deliver on some of the power plants under the National Integrated Power Projects, NIPPs.
The minister, who was in Lagos to attend the Power Stakeholders Workshop, in line with agreements reached with electricity workers’ unions, also explained that the current price tags put on power assets to be sold off to private investors were done in order not to under value them.
Nnaji, who spoke on developments in the power sector since the launch of the Roadmap, said, “When you look at the targets of power delivery in the short term, we are off in terms of target.
“The Roadmap are expectations, they are time frames and tasks. We are following the tasks. We are off in some areas, in terms of time line, but we are not off in terms of the tasks.
Recovery of power assets
The Roadmap was developed with the best intentions and developed in a way that will help us to deliver the Power Sector Reform Act. So in terms of the short term delivery, we are off, but not so much. When you look at the Federal Government recovery of power assets, we are on target with those, in terms of the implementation of the NIPPs, we are off, that is where we have major shortfalls.”
Refusing to admit that failure to deliver on some aspects of the Roadmap in the short term, can affect the overall delivery of targets, the minister insisted, “I am saying that there are certain things on the Power Roadmap that we are off. We have short term delivery, medium term delivery and long term delivery. So I am saying that we are off in certain things that contribute to short term delivery.
“But when you look at the other areas like the reform, we are actually on course like in the privatisation programme. So I think that overall, even though on the NIPPs we are off, that does not mean that we will not deliver on them. What this means is that in terms of the recovery of Federal Government assets we are on and in terms of the NIPPs we are off.
“In terms of the reform, which is privtaisation which has nothing to do with the NIPPs, we are on. In terms of assets recovery, we have turbines that are being repaired, Sapele, Egbin, Kainji, Afam, some have been recovered, some rehabilitated and some are expected to be completed. When the Roadmap was launched, we were under 3000 Mega Watts MW, but now we are above 4000MW – 4,300MW actually, the 300MW is the reserve.”
With regard to the valuation of the distribution companies being put up for privatisation, the minister said that this is being reviewed with a view to optimizing the assets in terms of depreciation, as is the practice globally.
Source