Power: Experts want review of privatisation

Magdalene Ukuedojor
Mar, Sun, 2025

Economy/Business

Power: Experts want review of privatisation

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By Constance Athekame

Some experts in the power sector have urged the Federal Government to, as a matter of urgency, review privatisation of the power sector.

The experts, who spoke to the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Abuja on Sunday, said that privatisation of the power sector was a good idea, but however added, that it was not working.

They said that a comprehensive auditing and review of the sector would form part of efforts to addressing the challenges in the industry.

NAN reports that privatisation of the sector in November 2013, was an initiative of the Federal Government to transfer ownership and management of power assets to private entities.

The move was to improve efficiency, attract more investments, and enhance overall electricity supply.

Eleven Electricity Distribution Companies (DisCos) and six Generation Companies (GenCos) were formed after the sector was privatised.

However, the transmission arm of the sector was retained by the Federal Government.

Mr Princewill Okorie, the National President, Association for Public Policy Analysis (APPA), said that government should carry out a national audit of the privatisation.

According to him, there should be a national committee to audit the privatisation and to also review it.

Okorie said that the auditing should be carried out on investments made in infrastructure and the revenue collected from electricity consumers since privatisation began in 2013.

“The auditing should also entail investments by consumers, local government councils, state governments, Federal Government and the international community.

“Government should carry out a thorough auditing of the privatisation process including investments in infrastructure and how much has been extorted from electricity consumers from inception to date.

Look at how much consumers have paid as tariff from inception till date and how much the investors have invested in the power sector,” he said.

Okorie said that based on the auditing of the sector, discussion on reversing the privatisation policy would be considered.

According to him, when the privatisation of the sector took off, the conditions or criteria that are to be met by investors have not been met.

“It was not even done on a sincere note and the data used was not correct.

“How can you privatise without adequate investment, and it was done in a way to make the citizens become cash cow.

“Now, the citizens are the ones that are being exploited. What they call privatisation in my opinion is extortion from citizens,” he said.

Okorie said that the audit of the privatisation process would precede the reversal.

Mr Uket Obonga, the National Secretary, Nigeria Electricity Consumers Advocacy Network (NECAN), also called for a review of the privatisation.

Obonga said that when the issue of privatisation came on board, Nigerians were happy that investors were coming to invest in the sector.

He said that privatisation was supposed to bring massive improvement and more infrastructure into the power sector but nothing seemed to have improved.

“So where do we go from here? What are we really doing? The privatisation that was well conceived has not really worked.

“So let there be a deliberate review of the entire privatisation,” he said.

Obonga also urged the government to set up a technical forensic audit team to audit the power sector infrastructure.

According to him, Generation Companies (GenCos) have invested so much and their capacity has scaled up to about 14,000 megawatts.

“Government should ensure that any Electricity Distribution Company (DisCo) that does not have certain amount of money to invest in infrastructure should not be allowed to continue to operate,” he said. (NAN) (www.nannews.ng)

Edited by Ese E. Eniola Williams

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