THE NIGERIA POWER PROBLEM & MY GROUSE WITH CHANNELS TELEVISION….

First published: 28 December 2014 at 15:52

FACT(BEFORE):

·      NEPAmonthly wage bill was N11billion monthly and they were paid weather people used(received ) the power or not.

·      NEPAdid not use to collect payment from all users of its power generated (supplied)and did not care as they will be paid at the end of the month.

·      NEPAstaff were not paid from revenue generated from provision of service

·      NEPAuse to share its targets to the following states: Lagos, Rivers, Abuja, Delta ,Kaduna& industrial firms in the Kano area.

·      NEPAdid not use to bill the waterfronts in Rivers State but gave estimated bills tothe civil & friendly waterfronts as some areas were no go areas for NEPAstaff.

·      NEPAcould not bill the palaces of Emirs and certain dignitaries in most of thenorthern states

·      NEPAwas owed hundreds of billions by government agencies at all levels and couldnot collect

·      Thatonly state governments were replacing Transformers and lines while NEPA staffwere only interested in vandalizing these assets and collecting money insupposed repairs.

·      ThatNEPA had helicopter pilots that never flew but were retrained annually abroad?

FACT(TODAY):

·      NEPAhas been unbundled particularly as it concerns Generation

·      PrivateEquity in excess of $3billion have been r invested in the sector

·      Thatthis $3billion was undeservedly used to pay off NEPA staff their entitlements

·      Peopleare now been trained to man this emerging sector

·      Theinvestors must generate revenue in order to recoup their investments

·      Thesenew managment firms can now be challenged and be sued

·      Thedecades of rot have revealed that our Transmission System built in the sixtiescannot evacuate the power generated or adequately service the generating plants.

·      Ithas also revealed that those who bamboozled us with billions spent onGenerating plants from 1999 to 2009 might have been economical about the extentof the problem or dishonest about their intentions or never thought theproblems through by (1) building Generating plants without adequate source of fueling(2) Never ever providing for the revamping and expansion of the prehistoricnational Transmission grid for the eventual evacuation of the  power generated.

·      Thatif these new power companies don’t deal with local lines, substations,transformers and even meters that they will never recoup their investments andrepay the loans they used in acquiring these assets.

MYGROUSE WITH CHANNELS TELEVSION:

·      Channelshave done a good job by providing a platform for discourse of our nationalissues and particularly on the power issue in Nigeria.

         This is not meant to impugn Channels Television as an organisation or its staff but cause a in-dept investigation of a critical sector of our national life.

·      Thatthe power issue can make or mar our nation and Channels have not done justiceto the subject matter.

·      Thatthey need to get out of the studio and do a review of what the ‘unbundling’ wasall about so as to authoritatively inform the public.

·      Thatit is uncharitable to discuss Power based on what the government has told youor the effect of power in the neighborhood of the presenters.

·      Thatthere is a need for Channels to go and find out the reality on ground on whatwere the assets inherited by the new managers and the challenges inherited ineach region for them to properly discuss these issues?

·      Thata review of our power architecture is necessary in terms of generation,transmission ,distribution et al for the Public to know where we stand with thegovernment and private operators.

·      Thata review of the various regulatory agencies and related government agencieswill be appropriate to ascertain relevance in the new dispensation or the needto create or modify the roles of these regulators.

·      Thatit will be necessary to know what the government’s plans are in the face ofdwindling revenue from oil and its contribution to this revolution in thissector.

·      Thatwhen channels have done the needful , that it will appropriate for the publicto be informed about the positive contributions of the unbundling exercise andthe ‘big picture’ of a deregulated sector to get the people’s buy- in  our quest as a nation for self-sufficiency powergeneration.

·      And give credit to whom credit is due…EugeneAbels 281214             #nigeria#channelstv #sunrisedaily  #nogoingbackontonepa