The Federal Government on Tuesday reached with the Abuja Electricity Distribution Company, AEDC and Ibadan Electricity Distribution Company, IBEDC on how to improve power supply to 10 states and the Federal Capital Territory, FCT, serviced by the utilities.
The Minister of Power, Chief Adebayo Adelabu had last week summoned the companies as well as the Transmission Company of Nigeria, TCN, over deteriorating power supply to their franchise areas.
Speaking at the meeting in Abuja, Chief Adelabu noted that efforts of the government to improve power supply across the would not yield tangible results without the cooperation of the DisCos.
He observed that rather than collaboration and partnership, it seems the government and the companies were working at cross purposes.
According to him, “We work through the operators. Our job as a Ministry is to expedite national development through formulation of appropriate policies, systems, and structures that will provide a conducive atmosphere for the operators in the sector to guarantee reliable, functional, and cost-effective electricity supply.
In which case, there is so much reliance on the operators”. Chief Adelabu added that the “problem with the power sector is not what you just throw money at and get results immediately. What matters most, beyond liquidity of financing and funding of the sector, is the passion, it is the commitment of the operators and their will to make a change beyond profiteering”.
Speaking to journalists after the meeting, the Ag. Managing Director, AEDC, Mr. Victor Ojelabi and the Managing Director of IBEDC, Kingsley Achife said they presented their challenges to the Minister which included poor load allocation and vandalism.
Mr. Achife said: “There’s been an extensive discussion, and we thank the Minister for holding this meeting, because what he has done is allow us to have a candid discussion and look, without blaming anybody, about the various challenges we have in our network. And from these challenges, we’ve been able to reach one conclusion.
“One way to solve it is to work together in partnership with TCN, which is the main company that gives us all the power we need. Most of the power we need, we distribute. So we’ve looked at areas where there’s been an issue, and the kind of problems it causes our customers.
“And, of course, there’s also the question of the challenge of the amount of power that is in the system, which also should have affected some of our customer expectations. So we have given ourselves a timeline of about a quarter, three to six months”.
On his part, the AEDC boss, Ojelabi explained that low supply from the grid was the major challenge faced by the company.
He explained that the company was “able to explain to the Minister what is responsible for the sudden drop in supply by us, which is beyond us.
“Just to explain, there’s generally low generation, which necessitated low allocation to both of us, AEDC and IBEDC. We gave statistics.
“For instance, for AEDC, my 2024, MYTO (Multi-Year Tariff Order) allocation is 611MW. In January, I got 561MW. That is a deficit of 50.
“But this worsened in February. I got 464MW, which gave a shortfall of 147MW. This power is not currently available to distribute to our customers”, he added.
