FG approves N300m power equipment rehabilitation- BPE

From Ayodele Samuel, Lagos

The Director General of the Bureau of Public Enterprises (BPE), Mr Benjamin Dikki, yesterday assured Nigerians that the challenges facing power supply will soon be thing of the part, adding that Federal Government has provided funding to Transmission Company of Nigeria (TCN) in the sum of N300 million from the one billion Euro-bond to improve infrastructure.

Dikki said this during a post-monitoring exercise to Ikeja Electricity Distribution Company (IKEDC) in Lagos According to him, the fund had been channelled to TCN, adding that there also loan from ADB. He said that currently, funding is not real major challenges of TCN in the process of identifying project to be executed by the fund. “All the money they have is sufficient to complete the rehabilitation but all they need now is to use the fund provided to them for effective projects rehabilitation before providing additional fund.

“TCN has advertised some of the rehabilitation of the projects to ensure effective evacuation of energy to distributions companies. “Government has also identified other area of financing projects of effective distribution through IPP projects.

“Quite number of IPP has been completed and will improve power supply tom the national grid.

“TCN is working towards increased to woo all the willing capacity into the national grid..

The Director General said that eight months after official handing over of the power sector to the private sector, IKEDC has shown tremendous improvement in areas of customer’s service delivery and equipment upgrading.

According to him, “Am indeed impressed with the transformation witnessed at the IKEDC after eight months of handing over to private sector.

“It is also a symbol of change that indicate operational different from government owe company to private sector driven. “Within eight months of taken over the Disco the quality service and effective goal driven has been established which makes it a business driven.

“We are delighted that all abandoned projects have been brought into operational use, because those facilities will go a long way in boosting the power.

“Today, we are happy to see the difference between government and private driven business in power sector. Dikki said that the post privatisation monitoring exercise is to identify area which government can be of assistance to the DISCOs and re- assured government support on post-privitisation.