The Minister of Power, Abubakar Aliyu, has directed the Market Operator (MO) to reconnect three distribution companies (DisCos) that defaulted in remitting their service charges.
He, however, gave the DisCos a 60-day grace period within which to pay their debts.
Daily Trust recently reported the disconnection of some feeders of the defaulters for protracted failure to remit funds for ancillary services offered by operators in the power sector and receivable by the MO, a section of the Transmission Company Nigeria (TCN).
The MO, Edmund Eje, in a statement on Sunday, said the DisCos were asked to be reconnected in order to alleviate the effects of the outage on the paying electricity consumers.
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“These suspended and disconnected defaulting market participants will be reconnected to the national grid at the instance of the honourable minister of power,” it stated.
The MO advised the three DisCos: Kano, Kaduna and APLE Electric (Aba Power) to pay up within the grace period.
“All market defaulters should comply with the provisions of the Market Rules with respect to payment of their outstanding invoices, posting of adequate Bank Guarantees (BG), and forwarding of their active Power Purchase Agreements (PPA) as the case may be, to the Market Operator/TCN.”
“At the expiration of this grace period, the Market Operator will resume sanctions in line with the Market Rules. The MO/TCN is hereby urging the erring Discos to seize this opportunity to fix their defaults as we applaud the intervention of the Minister,” stated Eje.
The MO also urged other defaulters who have yet to be suspended or disconnected to clear up within the 60 days.
