A New Power Sector I have been writing on power sector reform since this column commenced. I was researching and teaching on the subject even earlier than that! It’s been clear to me for decades that optimizing Nigeria’s economic potential was not going to happen until the country did something about our shocking deficit in electricity generation and distribution and I have long understood that the government monopoly, National Electric Power Authority (NEPA) which became Power Holding Company of Nigeria (PHCN) was never going to be the vehicle for redressing that embarrassing power shortfall. Like its other inefficient and failed peers (NITEL, Nigeria Airways, Nigerian National Supply Company (NNSC), Nigerian National Shipping Company (NNSL), Ajaokuta Steel etc., the company’s incentives were in no way aligned towards innovation, efficiency, service delivery or sustainability. Like the country itself, these organizations were debilitated by corruption, ethnicity, and nepotism and were structurally unable to accomplish any meaningful outcomes. It was clear that our “deliverance” in power would not come from incremental improvement in NEPA, but through structural change. I was therefore excited when I heard of a new power sector policy at the Bureau of Public Enterprises (BPE) which aimed to create a structurally different power sector in which NEPA would be unbundled into its generation, distribution and transmission components; a new regulatory infrastructure would be created; the issues of pricing would be addressed; and the generation and distribution entities would be privatized, while the transmission monopoly would be concessioned to private sector managers. I celebrated this new approach, which was formulated as far back as 2001 thinking that our salvation from self-inflicted darkness was at hand, but then I was naïve about Nigeria! This 2001 policy which was encapsulated into draft legislation, the Electric Power Sector Reform Bill of 2001and sent to the National Assembly same year was held up in parliament till 2005 when it was apparently reluctantly passed. It was amazing that a nation could treat a law to redress probably its most important socio-economic malaise in this manner, but then haven’t we always underrated the corrupt bureaucrats and regional politicians who have combined to undermine our prospects as a nation. nigeriapowerreform.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=756:a-new-power-sector&catid=54:sector-news&Itemid=137
Posted on: Wed, 11 Sep 2013 06:28:25 +0000
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