FG fires MD of power transmission company
Usman Gur Mohammed has been relieved of his appointment as the managing director of the Transmission Company of Nigeria (TCN).
Mohammed Sale, minister of power, approved of his sack on Tuesday, appointing Sule Abdulaziz to replace him in acting capacity.
“As part of continuing measures to reposition and improve the performance of the power Sector in the country, the Honorable Minister of Power Engr. Sale Mamman hereby announces major changes at the Transmission Company of Nigeria,” Aaron Artimas, spokesman of the minister, said in a statement.
“Accordingly, the Managing Director of the TCN, Usman Gur Mohammed has been removed from office with immediate effect. He is being replaced with Engr. Sule Ahmed Abdulaziz, as Managing Director, in acting capacity.
“The Honorable Minister has also confirmed the appointment of four directors who have been on acting position in the Company for some time.”
They are Victor Adewumi, executive director, transmission services provider; M. J. Lawal, executive director, independent systems operator; Ahmed lsa-Dutse, executive director, finance and accounts; and Justin Dodo, executive director, human resources and corporate services.
The statement said President Muhammadu Buhari approved of all the changes and appointments.
While the distribution and generation sub-sectors were sold to private investors during privatisation of the sector in 2013, the TCN is fully owned by the federal government.
It transmits the energy produced by the generation companies to the distribution companies (DisCos).
In December, the minister of power asked Marilyn Amobi, managing director of the Nigerian Bulk Electricity Trading Company Limited (NBET), to step down with immediate effect in order to “restore sanity” in the management of the agency.
The minister also ordered the indefinite suspension of Damilola Ogunbiyi, former managing director of Rural Electrification Agency (REA). But Buhari later reversed the minister’s order.
Source: The Cable
- Published in Uncategorized
Nigerians should be prepared to pay more for electricity – TCN boss
Mr Usman Mohammed, Managing Director, Transmission Company of Nigeria (TCN) has said that consumers should be prepared to pay more for electricity in order to ensure regular power supply in the country.
The TCN boss said this on Friday in Lagos during the Groundbreaking for the Replacement of old wires on the Ikeja West-Alimosho-Ogba-Alausa-Ota Transmission Lines.
According to him, Nigerians have to be prepared to pay more for electricity because there is no relationship between poverty and payment of electricity.
“I want to tell the Nigerian public that we cannot move forward if we do not pay more for electricity.
“There is no relationship between poverty and payment for electricity.
“For the poor, give them electricity and a means of measurement and manage their cost.
“But if we don’t initiate a cost-reflective tariff system and the situation continues like this, public funds would continue to sink in the sector in futility,” Muhammed said.
The TCN boss also urged the government to stop subsidizing the power sector in order to move the sector forward.
“We have to be prepared to remove government in the middle, this issue of government guaranteeing everybody won’t work.
“The facts is that contracts are not effective and government cannot continue guaranteeing the Generation Companies (GENCOs) where it already sank over N1.5 trillion.
“The expenses can only be stopped when contracts become effective through cost-reflective tariffs.
“We have to stop this government intervention and we can only stop it when contracts become effective.
“Contracts can only be effective when you have cost-reflective tariffs.
“When contracts are effective, everybody is bound by certain agreements,” he said.
According to him, Nigeria has the cheapest electricity in West Africa and we can’t say we are the poorest.
“Even Burkina Faso is having collection efficiency of 98 per cent, despite their location within the sub-region, we, therefore, have to solve the problem of market issues,” said the TCN boss.
Mohammed said that the issue of load rejection by Discos could also be resolved once bilateral contracts were effective.
Speaking on the cable replacement project, the TCN boss said that the power transmission lines were built many years ago with limitations on the quantity of electricity they were carrying, making the upgrade inevitable.
“So, we are in the process of replacement of old wires on the Ikeja West-Alimosho-Ogba-Alausa-Ota transmission lines.
“Due to the current management quest of improving availability of electricity in the country, there have been series of transformer installations across the country, and there is need for a line that can supply power to all the transformers.
“This installation will increase the current capacity of this station to about two and a half capacity compared to the old capacity of 200mw.
“The line to be re-conducted has 664MW capacity of the transformer, and the current line has only 200MW of capacity, so the re-conducting would increase the capacity by 2.5 per cent which would upgrade it to 500MW.
“That means all transformers the line Ikeja West is covering between Abeokuta and Lagos will be energized.
“The project would improve power supply to residents under the Ikeja Electric network,” he said.
Mohammed said that the timeframe for the reconstruction of the line was six months, adding that re-conducting was also taking place at other locations such as the line from Alagbon transmission to Ikorodu down to Maryland, among others.
The TCN boss said that being the largest TCN Sub Station in Nigeria, there were likely to be outages along with the network connected to the transmission line.
Source: The Guardian
- Published in Electricity