Lagos- Prof Chinedu Nebo, Minister of Power, on Monday said that technical and commercial energy losses remained a serious challenge to the socio-economic growth of power sector development in Nigeria.
Nebo made the statement during the official opening of Power African Workshop in Lagos with the theme “Metering, Billing and Loss Reduction: A Regional Workshop for Distribution Utility”.
Nebo, who was represented by Mr Godknows Igali, Permanent Secretary, Ministry of Power, said that the workshop was centered on the ways the private power sector owned Transmission Company of Nigeria (TCN) could reduce technical losses.
The minister said that the objective of the workshop was to introduce the participants to best practices in billing, theft reduction and marketing of their commodities to the end users.
According to him, Nigeria Power Sector Reform is the biggest most transparent power sector in the world.
“This forum is critical to the sector at this time.
“The technical and commercial losses affect both consumers and companies in areas of effective distribution companies.
“As at today about N390 billion has been paid as severance package benefits to defunct power sector workers.
“About 45,000 workers had been settled while 2,000 workers which identification of employment was not known were still pending,’’ he said.
The minister said that vandalism remained a big challenge, adding that power generation had reached about 5,000 mega watts but was truncated by vandals.
He said that power sector still battled with both technical and commercial losses which needed urgent solution, adding that Federal Government had taken a bold step to close metering gaps in the country.
Nebo said that President Goodluck Jonathan had approved funds for the procurement of one million electricity meters, which would be domiciled in Nigeria.
He said local meter manufacturers would be patronised, adding that government would not import pre-paid meters to serve electricity customers.
He said the private sector owners of the electricity distribution companies inherited a lot of customers who had no meters.
“The private sector inherited a customer base in which 50 per cent does not have meters. Nigeria has the highest per capital electricity theft in the world.
“That is why we are now doing smart meters and we are moving to a place where the meters will be mounted on poles because something has got to be done fast.
“As a result of the burden on the Discos due to meter issues, the President has provided funding to give over one million meters to Nigerians, to reduce the gap and then allow the Discos ensure that all customers are given meters,’’ he added.
[pro_ad_display_adzone id=”10″]
Mr Reuben Okeke, Director General, National Power Training Institute of Nigeria (NAPTIN), said that the greatest challenges that the present utilities faced were huge aggregate technical, commercial and collection losses.
Okeke said that the new distribution utility owners had decried that the losses they met in their distribution network were much more than they were informed.
According to him, the effect also translates to the possibility of a robust avenue for sharing experience from various companies and countries.
Mr Thomas Onyekauwah, Director, Transmission Company of Nigeria (TCN), said that the company recorded about 15 per cent losses in its transmission network.
Onyekauwah said that the company was indebted to the turn of N1.2 billion as transmission loses between August and September in 2014 which was 0.65 per cent.
He said that most of the losses came from energy theft by some high profile customers which tapped electricity illegally.
“From last quarter of 2014 to date we have reduced our technical losses to 5 per cent. (NAN)
