By Moses Uwagbale
Chairman of Ikeja Electric (IE), Mr Kola Adesina, says the electricity Distribution Company has signed an N11.4 billion contract to accelerate metering of its customers.
The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that Adesina made the disclosure while speaking with newsmen in Lagos.
Adesina said : “We have signed service contracts with all our customers and we will ensure that we provide supply to them.
“We are investing massively in network expansion and also giving out additional contracts for those who will do meters for us.
“We signed N11.4 billion contract for the purpose of metering our customers.”
He said IE had earlier invested $44 million in advanced metering infrastructure to increase technology and innovation into its business operations.
On the performance of the power sector since the privatisation process in 2013, Adesina maintained that significant progress had been made, but there was a lot of ground yet to be covered.
He said : “The kind of improvement we have made is not one we are happy about. It is not what we want to celebrate, but we have made significant improvement.
“We were doing about 3, 000MW in 2013 but today we are doing about 5, 700MW averagely.
” A lot of generating and distribution aspects were way behind, but now we are moving forward but we are not moving as fast as we should.
“We should actually leapfrog achievements than these incremental achievements we are making.
“The people living in Ogudu, Magodo, Ikeja and other areas where we have bilateral power supply agreements will tell you that things have improved with the quality of supply they are getting.”
Adesina noted that the Nigerian Electricity Supply Industry was heading towards corrective pricing which would provide incentive for investments.
“As we speak today, we made our own investment based on patriotism, based on nationalism, based on the fact that we are Nigerians, based on the fact that we believe that we had the capacity to bringing energy to life in Africa.
“The commercial principle of the sector needs to change and government has realised that the resources available to the state cannot meet all its expenses.
“Some of these commodities need to be economically priced. Pricing electricity economically is a commonsensical thing that any administration will naturally want to support.
“Nigeria is doing about 5, 700MW. That is very shameful if you ask me, for almost 200 million people.
“Like I said at a forum yesterday, Nigeria should be doing about 50, 000MW of electricity every day, ” he said.
According to him, the media and stakeholders need to portray the right narrative regarding how the sector can be revamped.
“We on our part should ensure that the framework to deliver that power is available and ultimately for the consumer to pay the right price, ” Adesina said.
