The Federal Government through the Minister of Power, Chief Adebayo Adelabu has on 11th March 2024, issued a directive to its agencies regulating the power sector, instructing the Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission (NERC), to withdraw licenses of electricity distribution companies for non-performance. Chief Adelabu during a meeting with the head of the agencies in Abuja faulted the DisCos for not doing enough despite the availability of power on the national grid to supply quality electricity. More so, stressing that NERC must look for creative ways of getting the DisCos to improve supply including the imposition of stiff sanctions on utilities that fail to pick their allocations and outright cancellation of licenses.
He insisted that the franchise areas covered by the DisCos were too large, adding the government would pursue a restructuring that would create smaller DisCos with companies restricted to one state each. He described the ongoing electricity rationing across the country as unacceptable, disclosing the government's plans to improve power generation from the present 4,000MW to 6,000MW in the next six months.
This, he said, would be achieved by paying off substantial debts owed to power generation companies and gas suppliers. “So what we are looking at is to have an agreement to ramp up to a minimum of 6,000 megawatts within the next three to six months. I know that the highest we ever generated was 5,700, about three years ago. That was specifically in November 2021.
He noted that while the Federal Government would continue to pay electricity subsidies in the short-term, it plans to gradually phase it out in the next three years and return the sector to a commercially driven tariff.
