The House of Representatives Committee on Power has commended the Management of Transmission Company of Nigeria (TCN), for its commitment to ensuring the transmission and maintenance of the grid system despite inadequate budgetary appropriation and poor funding of capital projects in the sector.

The Chairman of the Committee, Hon. Magaji Dau' Aliyu, gave the commendation during the Committee's oversight visit to TCN on Tuesday, 26th October 2021, in Abuja. Following the Committee's interaction with TCN Management, the Chairman expressed displeasure over the unsatisfactory state of the sector, particularly the declining budgetary provision for TCN over the years. He also raised fears that the power situation in the country might worsen unless urgent steps were taken to address the funding deficit.

Hon. Aliyu used the occasion to comment on general matters affecting the NESI. He made it clear that the Committee and indeed the leadership of the National Assembly needed to keep a closer watch on developments in the Power Sector such as budgetary appropriation for TCN and the role of the Central Bank of Nigeria in matters affecting Service Level Agreements between TCN and Distribution companies (DisCos).  

He promised that the Committee would deliberate on ways to improve TCN's budgetary allocation for the execution of more capital projects for the benefit of Nigerians. According to him, the oversight visit was to monitor progress on the execution of projects for which appropriation had been made.

He thereafter requested TCN Management to present to the House, a list of all pending projects and the amount needed for completion, to enable the House work towards making available sufficient funding for the projects, so that TCN can further expand the grid in service to the nation.  

In his remarks, the Ag. Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer, TCN, Engr. Dr. Sule Ahmed Abdulaziz thanked the Chairman and members of the Committee for their insightful comments and observations on the state of the Power Sector, particularly as it affects TCN. He appealed to the Committee to consider increasing the Federal Government budgetary allocation to TCN for completion of capital and ongoing transmission projects across the country.

According to him, TCN has 135 major capital projects, of which 42 have been completed with 30 substations and 12 transmission lines, while some ongoing projects financed by the Federal Government have been stalled over the years due to poor funding. He cited examples of TCN budget for the year 2009 which was N23 billion as against N5 billion for 2021, and N4 billion in the budget proposal for 2022.

“You can see that without our Internally Generated Revenue (IGR), we cannot do anything for Nigerians, and we do not know why the allocation keeps going down,” Engr. Abdulaziz lamented.

He further highlighted some of the achievements recorded by TCN to include; effective implementation of the Nigerian Electricity Grid Maintenance, Expansion and Rehabilitation Programme (NEGMERP), rehabilitation of the Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) and telecoms network, Service Level Agreement (SLA), WAPP North-Core regional interconnection project, rehabilitation of existing transmission lines and substations.

Others are proposed transmission lines and substations projects across the country funded by donor agencies which are at various stages of implementation; he noted that TCN's wheeling capacity will continue to increase with adequate funding.

In addition to the issue of poor funding, the Ag. MD/CEO Engr. Abdulaziz also drew attention to a major challenge that TCN grapples with all the time; which is payment of compensation for the acquisition of transmission lines Right of Way (RoW) in the country. “This is one of the greatest challenges we have. The money we pay for compensation in some cases is even greater than the cost of the projects. This is not healthy for projects execution and the burden of payment is entirely on TCN,” he said.