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By Merit Ibe
The Manufacturers Association of Nigeria (MAN) has decried the impending displacement of local meter manufacturers and assemblers in the downstream of the power sector in the process of government’s implementation of the national mass metering programme (NMMP) Phase II World Bank funded supply of 1.2million smart energy meters.
The Director general of the association, Segun Ajayi-Kadir, who made the remark noted that the advertised financial requirements and the technical specifications by the Transmission Company of Nigeria (TCN) appears to be skewed against local manufacturers as they are outrageously stringent and negate the CBN guidelines for the implementation of NMMP.
The MAN boss recalled that in keeping with the Federal Government’s backward integration policy and the advent of the NMMP intervention, manufacturers have made huge investments in expansion of manufacturing capacities, trained and promoted highly skilled workforce to meet the demands of the power sector as envisaged in the NESI.
Ajayi-Kadir lamented that the seeming intentional denial of the local manufacturers does not take into cognizance the sterling performance of the nascent local manufacturing.
“This is a federal government intervention in the power sector to accelerate energy meter supply in the country to bridge the metering gap and ought to be in sync with our overall national economic development objectives.
“We warn that this portends grave danger for the power sector as we may be witnessing a repeat of the ugly scenario in 2012 when local manufacturers were sidelined in the meter supply and the nation was greeted with substandard meters supplied by the foreign companies that were awarded the contract that were later removed from the network.
The position of the TCN that installation will provide employment opportunities to Nigerians will completely pale into insignificance when compared with a ratio of 1 to 10 jobs that will be created if local manufacturers are included in the scheme.”
He decried that members have been denied the opportunity to fully execute the contract for the supply and installation of 4m energy meters under the Phase 1 of the NMMP scheme.
“This was due to the unrealistic terms that arbitrarily fixed the contract prices extremely and far below the approved regulatory prices of energy meters in the country. Additionally, the contractual term of payment after the supply and installation of the meters have not been adhered to, thereby jeopardizing the financial capabilities of our members that participated in the scheme.”
Ajayi-Kadir opined that the subsisting Executive order 003 on patronage of made in Nigeria products and the avowed policy of government to give priority and first consideration to local businesses should have made the government to interrogate the world bank documents and actively consulted/engaged Nigerian stakeholders in the sector with a view mainstreaming their inputs.
“This is clearly the cardinal aspirations of the NMMP scheme, which is to strengthen the local meter value chain by increasing local meter manufacturing, assembly and deployment capacity as well as to support Nigeria’s economic recovery by creating jobs in the local meter value chain.”
