In the UK, we do not have such “quango”. Ofgem (office of gas and electricity market) is the regulatory body for gas and electricity. Like NERC, Ofgem has a number of technical codes and standards that licensees are required to have in force and comply with. Some of these are; 1. The Grid Code 2. The GB Security and Quality of Supply Standards 3. The Distribution Code, etc. Like NERC, Ofgem has experts staff that carry out duties involving equipment inspection, testing, certificating and so on. Under the Fraud and Compliance exercise, they carry out random audit and site inspections on equipment, check meter reading and verify eligibility for certain schemes. Just like NERC, they impose a range of sanctions on non-compliance companies. India is another good example. There the government is committed like Nigeria government to attract the private sectors in electricity industry. Their incentives include compensating of private electricity companies for loss that the face due to theft of electricity which I am not sure the Nigeria government does. They also liberalise the generation sector, such as those in embedded generation, through licence-free regime, which I do not think is the case in Nigeria. I gathered that NERC is about to move into a bigger and more permanent headquarters and is currently recruiting large number of experts to man necessary strategic knowledge vacuum in the system. A number of Regulations have been made recently. NERC remains the most important Regulator the country has and any attempt to make it derail its course will definitely affect the power sector and our economy in particular. Nigerians have to give the new investors and regulators more time rather than being too premature judgemental about their activities. I wish to use this media therefore to call on our Honourable legislators and Minister of Power that all hands must be on deck, including encouraging inward investment into the Embedded power generation system. There are over 155 embedded power generation companies in UK while Nigeria (3 times the population of UK) has just 20 of such organisations. The Bauchi State Government has taken initiative in this area and all other stakeholders, including other state governments and rich Nigerians should follow suit. Before the start of privatisation process, Nigeria government held summits in South Africa, London and USA trying to woo investors into power sector but without success. No wonder the foreign investors shunned our invitation. They think that Nigeria politicians may wake up one morning and decide to pass a Bill to establish a quango that may inspect their machines and underwear.
*Ekeh writes from Enfield, London EN3 4LA[eap_ad_3]
