A former Minister of Power and Executive Vice Chairman of the defunct Power Holding Company of Nigeria (PHCN), Engr. Bello Suleiman, has faulted the privatisation process of the PHCN, as executed by the Bureau of Public Enterprise (BPE) and called for an independent scrutiny of the entire process. 

He argued that BPE failed to pre-qualify credible companies that have the technical knowledge and adequate financial backing to successfully run the successor companies.  

The former minister explained that this was the reason government has been committing funds to the privatised power companies without meaningful results. He also condemned the proposed unbundling of the Transmission Company of Nigeria (TCN).

Engr. Bello Suleiman articulated his submissions while presenting a paper at a two-day  Public Hearing organised by the Senate Ad-hoc Committee on Power to investigate investments made in the power sector from 1999 to 2014 and the unbundling of the Power Holding Company of Nigeria (PHCN) on Thursday, 13th November, 2015. 

Engr. Bello also advised Federal Government not to buy the gathering proposals from selfish individuals to privatise TCN. According to him, since the privatised firms have not fared any better, offloading TCN to the same poorly performing private sector would be dangerous.   

Speaking at the hearing, Chairman of the ad-hoc committee, Sen. Abubakar Kyari said that the committee had gathered that there are some staff of the Bureau of Public Enterprises that are board members of GENCOs and DISCOs who were given Prado and Land Cruiser Jeeps. He said that these privileges given to BPE staff on boards of GENCOs and DISCOs were capable of compromising them such that they would not check- mate the negative activities of these privatised companies. 

The public hearing, had in attendance the various Managing Directors and Chief Executive Officers of companies that emerged from the unbundling and subsequent privatisation exercise of the Power Holding Company of Nigeria (PHCN), the Bureau of Public Enterprise (BPE), Nigerian Electricity Regulation Commission (NERC) and the Niger Delta Power Holding Company (NDPHC).

The Managing Director of the Transmission Company of Nigeria (TCN), Mack Kast, presented milestone achievements of TCN. He also pointed out that funding remains the major challenge facing the company with regards to achieving target transfer capacity.

He also debunked the position of the former Minister on the unbundling of TCN into two separate business units: Transmission Service Provider (TSP) and Independent System Operations (ISO), clarifying that the unbundling has the potential to give the Federal Government a clear perspective on essential areas that need urgent funding, infrastructural development and enhanced service delivery.   

Sen. Aliyu Sa'bi Abdullahi, a member of the ad-hoc committee, opined that the entire process of privatisation as executed by BPE, was shrouded in fraud and therefore needs to be scrutinized.