By CLARA NWACHUKWU
The Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission, NERC, has said that part of the priorities of the new management is to boost local content participation in the electricity industry, especially in those areas where indigenous capacity and competence are lacking.

The Commission also promised that within the next six months, electricity consumers will notice definite improvements in service delivery, with a view to effective consumer protection.

Speaking exclusively with Vanguard in Lagos on Friday, the Chairman of the Commission, Dr. Sam Amadi, said the NERC’s target is to ensure that within the next five to 10 years, Nigeria would have developed enough technical competence to be able to manage the electricity assets that are now scheduled for privatisation.

According to Amadi, “Local Content for me is not about who owns the shares, because ownership can change any moment, just like the Federal Government is trying to do now by trading 51 percent equity of some Power Holding Company, PHCN assets.

“So Local content is about who does the work, and we are going to put in place a policy framework that will compel prospective investors to enter into strategic partnership with Nigerian companies for knowledge transfer by training and retraining Nigerians for cost effectiveness.”

Ahead of this policy framework, the NERC boss disclosed that the Commission is in the process of reviewing licensing processes with a view to increasing indigenous participation in the energy sector.

“What we want is to get a commitment from the investors on how to transfer knowledge over the years, just like is dine in China, such that when the investors are operating at full capacity, we are able to retain the highest level of efficiency in_country, so that if for any reasons the investors have to go, the system will continue to function effectively without hiccups.”

Furthermore, Amadi said that the commission is also reaching out to other sectors in its drive for skills development such as the academia, the private sector and the civil organisations for joint development of resources and think tank, which can be tapped into for skills enhancement.

With regard to poor service delivery by the PHCN and random breaching of consumer rights, Amadi, who admitted that while the NERC may not have done satisfactorily well in the discharge of protecting the consumer in the past, it is now awake to this responsibility.

According to him, “Consumers will definitely notice some improvements within the next six months because we are now in the process of establishing call centres for effective interface between the commission and the consumers. This way, we will be boosting confidence while also improving on customer relations. Distribution companies are now being required to provide quality customer service as well as provide feedbacks so that problems can be solved as quickly as possible.

Defending the commission’s inability to enforce disciple in some areas, the NERC boss attributed this to structural and political constraints, which are now being corrected, especially given the support and commitment from the Presidency through the current power sector reforms.

He gave the assurance that the commission has developed a regulatory framework that will protect both the investors and consumers alike, such that no party can take undue advantage of the other.