Yemisi Izuora
The Chief Executive Officer and Managing Director, of Transmission Company of Nigeria, TCN, Usman Gur Mohammed, has said that Nigeria is the only country in the West African Sub-region operating an unrealistic and unsustainable electricity tariff structure.
He therefore advised government to consider an immediate electricity tariff review that will be cost reflective if it wants the power sector to survive.
Mohammed said Nigeria currently operates the cheapest tariff regime in West Africa, and the subsidy policy in the sector which is estimated at N1.7 trillion in the last six years is not sustainable and will not attract the desired private sector buy-in.
Speaking in Lagos Thursday at the groundbreaking ceremony of TCN reconductering
project at the Ikeja West subregion, in Ipaja-Ayobo, he said Nigerians should be ready to pay for electricity or the industry will go under.
Mohammed said the TCN has embarked on numerous upgrading exercise of weak transmission lines but the efforts would not translate to sustainable distribution of power as Distribution Companies, Discos are rejecting power because the present tariff structure does not guarantee return on investment.
“Cost reflective tariff is key to drive the sector and today Nigeria has the cheapest electricity tariff in West Africa, which will not sustain growth”, he said.
On its part he said the TCN, is going ahead with grid expansion which include re-conducting some lines where we have transformer capacities but the lines are not robust enough to carry power to those transformer capacities.
Now the high capacity conductors which we procured, conductors that are currently lighter than those conductors that we have on those lines, and are carrying almost two and half times of the current conductors.
Among the plan is to re-conduct Onitsha, Awka, Oji River line to optimise the capacities in Awka and Oji River.
“We are reconducting Ikeja West, Alimosho to Ogba, Ogba to Ota. We are also reconducting Alimosho to Alausa, Kaduna to Zaria, Zaria to Funtua, Funtua to Gwozo, Birini Kebi to Sokoto. We are also reconducting the line from Aba to Itu and so on. So these are the lines we are going to use these high capacity wires to reconductor them.
The choice of Ikeja West to kickoff the initiative is that the axis has highest industry concentration in Nigeria and sustainable electricity supply along the route will stimulate economic activities.
He however regretted that whatever investment to stabilise the grid will amount to nothing except we have same thing on the distribution side, adding that sustainability of the investments in transmission will not be guaranteed if there is no commensurate investments on the distribution side because all is connected to each other.
In his comment, the chairman of Ikeja Disco, Kola Adesina commended the TCN for the upgrade exercise, pointing that all what consumers wanted is to have electricity at all times.
Adesina promised to offer all necessary support to ensure the project is delivered on schedule since consumers will experience outages in the course of the project.
In his remarks, the Lagos state Commissioner for energy and mineral resources, Olalere Odusote, assured of the state government support especially in the area of guaranteeing the Right-Of-Way, ROW, to enable the project proceed without hitches.
Odusote, said the government in few days will make pronouncement on its intervention in the energy sector which aims at boosting energy for industrial growth.
