The Minister of Power, Works and Housing, Babatunde Fashola, on Friday lambasted the Association of Electricity Distributors and condemned its recent reaction to his directives to the Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission, the Bureau of Public Enterprises and Nigeria Bulk Electricity Trading Company.
Fashola, who called the association’s spokesperson an interloper, stressed that his directives went to legal entities and not to an unlicensed organisation, ANED, and accused the Discos of sabotaging the nation’s economy through their actions.
In a 28-page document released in Abuja on Tuesday by ANED, the power distributors argued that most of the statements about Nigeria’s power sector that were made last week Monday by Fashola were false.
They said comments made by the minister on metering, power generation and transmission capacities and stranded electricity, among others, were significantly distorted.
Fashola had briefed journalists on the status of Nigeria’s power sector at the headquarters of the Federal Ministry of Power, Works and Housing in Abuja last week Monday and had pointed to a lot of lapses on the part of the Discos.
The minister, who was displeased by ANED’s reaction to his briefing, issued a statement he personally signed on Friday saying, “Before fiction becomes fact for lack of a response, I feel obliged to respond to some, not all of the allegations credited to one Mr. Sunday Oduntan, who presents himself as Executive Director, Research and Advocacy of the Association of Electricity Distributors, which he made in response to my directives to NERC and the BPE/NBET as contracting parties to the Discos.
Throughout my press statement, which contained the directives, I referred copiously to the provisions of the Electric Power Sector Reform Act, which is the law that regulates the power sector. I referred to the Discos in their capacities as licensees. Mr. Oduntan should tell members of the public if ANED is a licensee.
“He should tell the public whether he is an investor in a Disco and in which Disco he has invested and what he invested. He should tell members of the public that I walked him out of our monthly meeting, because he has no capacity to attend and he was not invited. If ANED is not a licensee, who is ANED? An NGO? If so, they should listen to consumers, because nothing is going on about poor service.”
The minister argued that the BPE, NBET and NERC, to whom his directives were targeted, contracted individually with the Discos and not as an association, adding that power supply had economic consequences and political relevance.
