Fashola Challenges DISCOs Over Poor Power Supply

The Minister of Power, Works and Housing, Mr. Babatunde Fashola (SAN), has asked the 11 power Distribution Companies (DIS­COs) to rise to the challenge of providing adequate electricity for Nigerians and stop blam­ing their non-performance on obsolete equipment.
He told the DISCOs on Monday that they knew the state of the assets before buying them, stressing that “nobody forced them into acquiring the companies.”

Fashola made the asserting when he addressed stakehold­ers at the opening of the 15th Monthly Power Sector meeting in Jos, the Plateau State capital.
He said: “DISCOs’ perfor­mance under which you allege the power infrastructure you inherited is old and that some progress has been made by you and that I am the first to pub­licly defend your contributions to the sector, but to the extent that consumers are not yet sat­isfied, you must do more to im­prove your services.
“Rather than complaining about old infrastructure, I wish to remind you that nobody forced you to buy those assets and you knew what you were buying.
“The N701.9 billion in­tervention fund is consistent with the government’s policy and determination to enable businesses flourish, and it was intended to save the Genera­tion Distribution Companies (GENCOs), the gas companies and their financiers who were providing services from the collapsed equipment,” he ex­plained.
The minister lamented that instead of the DISCOs to spell out their grievances during the monthly meetings, they went about issuing press statements condemning the government’s actions.
“Your statements did not tell members of the public that these companies were not get­ting paid because you were not remitting all of what you should remit to the Nigeria Electricity Bulk Trading Com­pany (NBET) and the market operator, admittedly because of reasons that are partly and not partly your fault.
“As I said when I convened the first of these monthly meet­ings, it is entirely voluntary and nobody is under compul­sion to attend. As I have done at almost every previous meet­ing, I will now ask you all again to vote whether we should con­tinue the meeting.
“If the outcome of the vote is to discontinue the meeting, this will be my valedictory statement to the meeting. If the outcome of the vote is to continue the meetings, then I will demand that this meeting must remain the platform for ventilating and resolving issues relating to the sector without prejudice to other meetings that the regulator may con­vene”, he said.
Fashola maintained that as the head of the ministry, “I re­gret that I will not deal with an association because the Bureau of Public Enterprises (BPE) acting for the National Coun­cil on Privatization (NCP) did not contract the asset sales and performance agreements with an association and neither did Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission grant you licenses as an association.”