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From Juliana Taiwo-Obalonye, Abuja
In order to increase the amount of electricity available to consumers in Nigeria, the Managing Director of Niger Delta Power Holding Company (NDPHC) Limited, Chiedu Ugbo has assured that the company was addressing the challenge of bottlenecks affecting electricity distribution.
He made the disclosure during an interview session with State House Correspondents, soon after he led the management of the company to the Presidential Villa, Abuja, for a meeting with Vice President Kashim Shettima.
He said: “We just had an inaugural board meeting under the Chairmanship of His Excellency the Vice President, Senator Kashim Shettima.
“What you see is that the whole grid is challenged by offtake evacuations from transmission and offtake by distribution and if distribution is not able to take what the distribution can carry; transmission will not be able to take what you can generate so it is as simple as that.
“But what we are doing is, we are working assiduously to ensure end to end from generation to end users. We are working with distribution companies now so we are working with transmission companies to clear the bottlenecks, we also work with distribution companies to clear the bottlenecks to ensure that we reach the end users.
“We equally have distribution interventions all over the country, in all the states, to ensure that we improve the capacity of the distribution companies. Right now, we are working with Eko and Ibadan distribution companies using what we call bilateral sales. So, we sell directly to them. Thankfully, the ones we are selling and some of them are paying us as at due
“We are also targeting industrial and huge consumers who by the National Electricity Regulatory Commission’s regulation that can take two megawatts and above, We are supplying them and we are working on supplying more.”
Speaking on efforts being made to address the challenges the company is facing, Ugbo said: “We have a mandate as the Niger Delta Power Holding Company Limited. The governments of the Federation, federal, state and local governments have spent a lot of money in terms of the assets which have been developed on behalf of Nigerians.
“The assets are there so we have been charged to make sure that the assets are optimized, for the benefit of Nigerians. We need maximum performance of the assets, particularly the power generation assets, where we have gas limitations.
“We also have transmission and distribution limitations, but we are a government investment and we will work with the relevant stakeholders to make sure we resolve these challenges and to ensure that the load from these power plants is off taken for the benefit of Nigerians,” he added.
The Managing Director stated that the requirement to resolve a government debt that the company is still owing is a systemic issue that will also be remedied.
“It is a systemic issue in terms of collections from the distribution companies to the Nigeria bulk Electricity Trading NBET (N-BET) and N-BET paying us. It is a systemic issue and because of that, we owe some gas companies as well. But I think the regulatory commission with the Federal government; they are working on that to see that it’s resolved within the shortest possible time. Yes, we’re being owed no doubt,” he affirmed.
