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New power policy implementation coming

The Federal Government will in September 2024 unveil the new Integrated Power Policy Strategic Implementation Plan in September 2024.

Minister of Power, Chief Adebayo Adelabu broke the news to reporters during the Ministerial Retreat on the plan in Abuja yesterday.

Asked to give the timeline for the plan, he noted that the process, which commenced on Tuesday will last up to September next year.

"The process that will last up to September 2024 before we come up with this strategic implementation plan and industry resource planning," he said.

The minister noted that the policy plan of the retreat has not halted the work in the Nigerian Electricity Supply Industry (NESI) as it keeps addressing issues as they unfold.

He however explained that "What this retreat is going to achieve is to come up with a set of policies that is collectively agreed by all industry operators to have their support and their embrace of these policies to ensure that we have a sustainable and enduring policy framework for the industry.

"It is a continuous process.  It is not something we can finish just today and tomorrow."

Adelabu further noted that the most important thing is to come up with all the policies for successive implementation.

 "We will now come up with what we call a strategic implementation plan for the entire industry which will be a permanent document which the act requires of me as the minister and of the Federal Ministry of Power," he added.

The minister further noted that the plan will cover a lot of things from technical to regulation.

According to him, the stakeholders in the retreat are looking at the human capacity that can actually serve the industry.

The minister insisted that "For us to achieve our vision for the power sector, it must be supported by people."

Raising some questions about the competence of the manpower in the industry, he asked, "Do we have the kind of technical competence, the quality of competence we require, the number of people that we require, the kind of experience and exposure that we require in this sector the way they plan to achieve success?"

He described the retreat as an enlarged stakeholders’ engagement and policy that will actually culminate in what is required by the Electricity Act 2023 which talks about Integrated Power Policy Strategic Implementation Plan.

Adelabu said, the process which is ongoing involves working with consultants, development partners, multilateral agencies and stakeholders from the entire NESI value chain. He added that it will also engage the consumers in another forum.

According to him, the retreat is already looking into the issues drawing back the industry from achieving success.

Continuing, he said, "the last two days have been very engaging and we have a plethora of issues that we are going to attend to that culminate in reversed policy in the power sector.

"The policy we are using now is outdated. It is the policy of 2001. So, it is actually ripe for a review and a revision, which is what we are doing now.

"At the end of he day, the policy we are going to come up with will actually support our transformation roadmap across all the segments of the power sector from gas supply to generating companies to transmission company of Nigeria. "We spoke about unbundling TCN, into Transmission Service Operator TSO and the Independent System Operator (ISO). This is to accelerate performance of TCN.

"Most importantly, the distribution company, which actually the last map in this value chain. They are the ones that ensure that power gets to the doorstep of the consumers."

Adelabu insisted that if the TCN is not transformed, the efforts at turning around the sector will be in vain.

He noted that the retreat will also address issues as infrastructure investment, issues of metering gap, issues of power asset vandalism, power theft, and connections difficulties.

The minister explained that addressing the issues will ensure the achievement of the liquidity, which the industry has been deprived.

With this, he said there could be a realization of minimizing the Aggregate Technical and Commercial losses of the DisCos so that at least a substantial portion of generated power is transmitted and distributed to customers.

Adelabu said: "And as we do that there is also a substantial portion of liquidity for the consumers back into the value chain so that the investment of all these stakeholders can be realized. That is what we are looking at."