The Senate, on Wednesday, said it has launched a comprehensive investigation into all the Federal Government interventions in the power sector to the tune of N1.8 trillion.
The Senate President, Ahmad Lawan, had, last month, said the privatization of the power sector had failed and asked the Federal Government to reverse it.
Lawan said despite several interventions by the federal government running into trillions of Naira, there was no improvement of power supply.
He said if the country maintained the current system for ten years, it can never guarantee regular power supply.
But the Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission (NERC) advised against the reversal of sales of the power sector utilities.
It said the Federal Government may not have money to buy back the utilities and may be acting in contravention of the agreement entered with the new owners.
Speaking at a meeting of the Senate Committee on Power, Senator Gabriel Suswam, said the probe, which will cover the period of the privatization of the sector to date, was to ascertain the adequacy of government interventions and their desired impact.
The investigation, he said, was not going to be punitive but to ascertain why there had been no improvement in power supply despite the several federal government interventions.
He said, “You know that the federal government had over the years intervened at various times in different sums. 701 billion, 600 billion and and this year there has been 380 billion and 213 billion.
“All of these monies were federal government interventions in the power sector with the intention and hope that the power sector will become efficient and Nigerians will have access to electricity.
“Unfortunately, in spite of these huge amount of money that had been expended, the result in what we see today is that the performance was below expectations.”
Suswam said the panel will probe all market participants in the power value chain and ascertain the level of corporate governance compliance in the electricity industry.
He listed the ministries and organizations to be probed to include ministries of Power and Finance, the Bureau of Public Enterprises (BPE), Nigeria Bulk Electricity Trading (NBET), Nigeria Electricity Regulatory Commission (NERC), Transmission Company of Nigeria (TCN).
Others are power generation companies (GENCOs), Distribution Companies (DISCOs), Transmission companies, Nigeria Electricity Liability Management Company (NELMCO) and Gas-to-Supply.
