Nearly 12 years after the privatisation of Nigeria’s power sector in 2013, the promise of improved electricity supply and sector efficiency remains largely unfulfilled, despite the federal government’s massive financial interventions totalling over N15 trillion.
This is as key stakeholders and power sector experts have picked holes in the flawed privatisation process of the country’s electricity sector, with some demanding a review of the exercise to promote transparency and efficiency.
Their reactions followed the admission by a former Minister of National Planning, Dr Shamsuddeen Usman, that the power assets sale exercise was characterised by a lack of transparency.
Dr Usman, a former Minister of National Planning under President Goodluck Jonathan, revealed serious irregularities surrounding the 2013 privatisation of Nigeria’s power generation and distribution companies.
Speaking at the Nigerian Society of Engineers’ lecture in Abuja, Usman admitted that government officials and politicians jostled for shares in the power companies, compromising the integrity of the process.
Dr Usman lamented that politicians and government officials, who should have remained neutral, instead exploited their positions to secure shares in the privatised power assets for personal benefit.
He said, “We sold DisCos and GenCos to ourselves,” with “big masquerades” involved in ownership, undermining the sector’s reform goals.
LEADERSHIP reports that the privatisation of the sector, during which 11 distribution companies (DisCos) and six generation companies (GenCos) were sold to private investors, has been marred by ownership tussles, financial distress, and persistent power shortages that continue to plague millions of Nigerians.
Reflecting on the process, Usman stated, “I was part of the power privatisation and I am not going to extricate myself. It is a collective responsibility and I am not comfortable with the speed at which we rushed that exercise.”
He admitted that unlike in earlier privatisation efforts, which were governed by strict codes of conduct, the electricity sector privatisation was compromised.
“At that time, we had the Code of Conduct that ensured that no member of the management or the board actually could buy any of the assets that we were selling. The electricity privatisation unfortunately was not handled that way,” he said.
Usman, who served as the first Director-General of the Technical Committee on Privatisation and Commercialisation (TCPC), disclosed that political considerations overshadowed economic and technical qualifications in selecting buyers.
“If you look at all these DisCos and GenCos, unfortunately, some of us saw it at that time, but there wasn’t much we could do because of the rush and political thing it had become. There is in each and every one of them at least one or two ‘big masquerades’,” he said.