The Manufacturers’ Association of Nigeria (MAN) has warned that government’s implementation of the National Mass Meter Manufacturing Programme (NMMP) Phase II World Bank-funded supply of 1.2 million smart energy meters may displace local manufacturers and assemblers.
Giving the warning in a statement issued at the weekend, the association’s Director-General, Segun Ajayi-Kadir, described the advertised financial requirements and the technical specifications by the Transmission Company of Nigeria (TCN) as “outrageously stringent” and skewed against local manufacturers, thereby negating the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) guidelines for the implementation of NMMP.
He added that since the programme is a Federal Government’s intervention in power sector to accelerate energy meter supply in the country and bridge the metering gap, it should be implemented to be in sync with the nation’s overall national economic development objectives.
“We warn that this portends grave danger for the power sector as we may be witnessing a repeat of the ugly scenario in 2012 when local manufacturers were sidelined in the meter supply and the nation was greeted with supply of sub-standard meters supplied by the foreign companies that were awarded the contract and were later removed from the network.
“The position of the TCN that installation will provide employment opportunities to Nigerians will completely pale into insignificance when compared with a ratio of 1:10 jobs that will be created if local manufacturers are included in the scheme,” he argued.
Ajayi added that in keeping with the Federal Government’s backward integration policy and the advent of the NMMP intervention, local manufacturers had made huge investments in expansion of manufacturing capacities, trained and promoted highly skilled workforce to enable them to meet the demands of the power sector as envisaged in the NESI.
Besides, he stated further that they had also deployed and installed a total number of 611,231 energy meters across the country between January 2019 and January 31, 2021, under the Meter Assets Provider (MAP) initiative of the Federal Government and another one million energy meters across the country under the phase zero of the National Mass Metering Programme (NMMP).
MAN’s DG therefore expressed regrets at the “seeming intentional denial of the local manufacturers,” adding that it does not take into cognisance the sterling performances of the nascent local manufacturing in this area.
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