Business
‘Technical, Commercial Losses, Bane of Power Sector’
Minister of Power, Prof Chinedu Nebo has said that technical and commercial energy losses remained a serious challenge to the socio-economic growth of power sector development in Nigeria.
Nebo made the statement during the official opening of Power African Workshop in Lagos with the theme “Metering, Billing and Loss Reduction: A Regional Workshop for Distribution Utility”.
Nebo, who was represented by Mr Godknows Igali, Permanent Secretary, Ministry of Power, said that the workshop was centered on the ways the private power sector owned Transmission Company of Nigeria (TCN) could reduce technical losses.
The minister said that the objective of the workshop was to introduce the participants to best practices in billing, theft reduction and marketing of their commodities to the end users.
According to him, Nigeria Power Sector Reform is the biggest most transparent power sector in the world.
“This forum is critical to the sector at this time.
“The technical and commercial losses affect both consumers and companies in areas of effective distribution companies.
“As at today about N390 billion has been paid as severance package benefits to defunct power sector workers.
“About 45,000 workers had been settled while 2,000 workers which identification of employment was not known were still pending,” he said.
The minister said that vandalism remained a big challenge, adding that power generation had reached about 5,000 mega watts but was truncated by vandals.
Nebo said that President Goodluck Jonathan had approved funds for the procurement of one million electricity meters, which would be domiciled in Nigeria.
He said local meter manufacturers would be patronised, adding that government would not import pre-paid meters to serve electricity customers.
He said the private sector owners of the electricity distribution companies inherited a lot of customers who had no meters.
“The private sector inherited a customer base in which 50 per cent does not have meters. Nigeria has the highest per capital electricity theft in the world.
Director General, National Power Training Institute of Nigeria (NAPTIN),
Mr Reuben Okeke, said that the greatest challenges that the present utilities faced were huge aggregate technical, commercial and collection losses.
Okeke said that the new distribution utility owners had decried that the losses they met in their distribution network were much more than they were informed.