We’ll soon address liquidity issues in power sector – Minister

The Minister of Power, Adebayo Adelabu, has said the federal government will direct policies to tackle the liquidity issues facing the power sector.

The minister, during a ministerial retreat Sunday in Abuja, said the government’s intervention in the sector would prove futile if the distribution part is neglected with its various challenges.

Adelabu, while urging heads of agencies in the ministry to redouble their efforts, said they risked sack if problems in the sector persist.

He said he is currently employing the carrot approach in managing the sector but failure for changes would lead to wielding the stick.

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“We are going to address all these issues to ensure that the liquidity which this industry has been deprived of is realised. To ensure that, we minimise the ATC and C losses of the DisCos so that a substantial portion of generated power is transmitted and distributed to customers. ’’As we do that, there is going to be a substantial portion of liquidity from the consumers back into the value chain so that investments of all these stakeholders can be realised.

“Most importantly, are the DisCos, they are the last mile of this value chain as they ensure power gets to the doorstep of consumers, if they are not transformed, our efforts to transform this sector will be a joke.

“We know the DisCos have major issues which we are going to treat with our policies. Issues of infrastructure investment, metering gap, power asset vandalism, power theft and collection difficulties.”

“It is logical that the minister’s performance is contingent on the performance of the entire public service he is supervising. It is an aggregation of the performances of these people that sums up the performance of this minister. I appeal to the people working with me to support us to deliver and not disappoint the president.

“It is a carrot and stick approach; we are using the carrot now while appealing to ourselves. If this does not work, we are going to wield the big stick. Before I am shown the way out, a lot of people will also leave before me.

“It is a way to encourage ourselves to support us in achieving the target and mandate of the power ministry.”

He said the retreat is like an enlarged stakeholder engagement and policy which would culminate into what is required by the Electricity Act of 2023.

“It is an ongoing process but we will speed it up by working with our consultants, multilateral agencies, development partners, and all industry stakeholders from generation to transmission and distribution and the consumer’s forum.”