The Federal Government has approved N600 billion to boost electricity in the country.
Market operator of Transmission Company of Nigeria, Edmund Ejie, disclosed this at the third quarter Participants and Stakeholders’ Interactive forum for 2019.
The forum has as its theme ‘Rules Compliance for Nigerian Electricity Market (NEM) Development and Sustainability’.
Ejie said the intervention, which had been signed by President Muhammadu Buhari, was at very advanced stage.
According to him, the intervention is for the payment of the shortfall in electricity invoices for the entire market.
“The whopping sum has never been injected into the power sector before. But even when it is privatised, the government is spending more, that means a red flag forprivatisation.
“The fund will be ready for disbursement any moment from now,” he said.
Ejie explained that the intervention was not restricted to a single chain in the market, as it was holistic.
The Managing Director of TCN, Usman Mohammed, said that one of the factors that would make the Nigerian electricity market viable was compliance with rules, codes and orders.
He stressed the need for the operators to be proactive in recognising regulatory and standard compliance as key to market development.
“The theme of the event reflects the growing recognition, concern and importance of regulatory compliance and ruling documents implementation.
“Today’s interactive forum is part of the market operator’s effort to support you and improve the market performance,” he said.
The forum, he added, was to access the market performance, changes and their impact on the market participants’ readiness and challenges, predict what lies ahead and determine compliance to rules or lack of it.
Mohammed said that TCN had commenced the provision of Automatic Meter Reading in all trading modes in the country.
TCN also plans to establish lasting Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition equipment and facilitate the operational audit of both the system and market operator, he disclosed.
