TCN insists on DISCOS providing meters for electricity consumers

THE Transmission Company of Nigeria (TCN) has called on Distribution Companies (DISCOS) to provide electricity consumers with adequate meters as a way to deal with power supply challenges in the country.

Managing Director of the company, Usman Mohammed, who addressed State House Correspondents at the presidential villa, Abuja on Monday decried the arbitrary billing of electricity consumers in the country which he said cannot encourage prompt and consistent payment of electricity bills.

According to him, Nigerian electricity consumers are ready to pay their electricity bills if only they are sure they are being billed appropriately.

Usman dismissed the assertion that consumers are too poor to pay electricity tariffs, saying when provided with meters, they will be spared the hassles of indiscriminate billing.

He also said that inadequate power supply is not responsible for failure to pay bills as meters will allow consumers to pay for what is available.

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He cited smaller and poorer countries like Burkina Faso which he said had achieved as much as 98 per cent electricity transmission because they had taken up the challenge of regulated and metered electricity supply to consumers.

Mohammed argued that such efficiency allows Burkina Faso to buy energy from neighbouring Cote D’Ivoire without owing and debts.

He announced that Nigeria’s transmission capacity currently stands at 8,100 megawatts although only about 5,000 megawatts can be taken up by the DISCOs.

Despite that, he assured that the TCN will continue to expand its capacity as the DISCOs also strive to expand to ensure improved power supply in the country.

Usman noted that TCN has set a target of 20,000 megawatts of electricity transmission capacity by 2021.

“We have established transmission, rehabilitation and expansion programme. The main objective of this is to rehabilitate, stabilize and expand the delivery capacity of TCN to at least 20,000 megawatts by 2021 and we are on track,” he said.

He added that transmission capacity improved by over 3,000 megawatts between February and December, which he attributed to the current rehabilitation and expansion programme.

He regretted that the increase in transmission capacity has not translated into distribution because of the ratio of demand to supply.

The TCN boss, however, expressed confidence that the situation will soon change with more industrial customers demanding to be put on the national grid.

He disclosed that international donors have injected a total sum of $1.6 billion to finance critical electricity transmission and distribution projects which will soon result to substantial improvement in electricity supplies to end-users.

He gave some of the projects benefiting from the gesture to include Abuja transmission ring scheme which is financed by the French Development Agency which attracted $170 million; the Nigeria Electricity Transmission Access Project (NETAP), a $486 million project financed by the World Bank; Lagos- Ogun Transmission Project, costing $200 million financed by Japanese International Agency (JICA); Northern Corridor Transmission Project to be financed by French Development Agency and European Union at $245 and €25 million respectively and Nigeria Transmission Expansion project to be financed by the African Development Bank at the cost of $410 million.