The Head of Civil Service of the Federation (HoSF), Mrs. Winifred Ekanem Oyo-Ita, has blamed the persistent poor electricity supply on the Power Distribution Companies (Discos) whom she said were not living up to expectations.
She revealed this in Calabar, Cross River State, at a ceremony where she inaugurated a new 60MVA and 132/33KV power transformer at the Calabar Transmission Substation, Essien Town, which was installed by the Transmission Company of Nigeria (TCN).
Oyo-Ita stated that for the trend to change, and for Nigerians to appreciate the huge investment in the generation and transmission components of the power sector, the Discos must embark on massive investments in the rehabilitation and expansion of their facilities.
“The distribution companies should now invest more in the distribution network because that is where the problem lies. There is a lot of power that is being generated by generating plants and transmitted by transmission plants but the Discos do not have the capacity to transfer this power to the end users.
Some of the Discos are not investing so that they could transfer this power to the end users. Nigerians will never appreciate the large amount of money being invested in power generation. So, we are appealing to the distribution companies to go back to the drawing board,” she said.
She also noted that the federal government was willing to offer support to the distribution companies so that they can render adequate service to Nigerians.
“If they know they don’t have the financial or the technical wherewithal, let them come out and be sincere and stop frustrating Nigerians as well as painting government in a bad light. So my appeal to the distribution companies is that with all these large investments we see all over the country, they should take power distribution more seriously, ” she said.
According to her, the newly inaugurated facility would lead to the generation of large quantity of power for Port Harcourt Distribution Company (PHEDC), and it is going to improve the socio-economic growth and development of the state, and would improve power supply significantly in Calabar Municipality, Calabar South, Odukpani, Bakassi, Ogoja, Ikom, Yakurr, Itigidi, Ugep, Obudu and environs.
She said the implementation of the Transmission, Rehabilitation and Expansion Programme (TREP) was on course across the country with plans by the federal government to expand the national grid.
