By Emman Ovuakporie & Johnbosco Agbakwuru
ABUJA—THE House of Representatives, yesterday, moved to probe the status and sale of non-core assets of Power Holdings Company of Nigeria, PHCN.

To this end, the House at plenary mandated its committee on power to probe the matter and report back in four legislative weeks.

The House said since 2011, when PHCN’s non-core assets were transferred to the Nigerian Electricity Liability Management Company, NELMCO, for disposal in order to recover finances, they had been lying fallow, misappropriated and abused.

Adopting a motion by Chukwuemeka Ujam (PDP, Enugu), the House said the assets were supposed to be valued and later transferred for sale or put to use to recoup investments.

The House noted that it would be good if the assets were put to good use or, better still, sold instead of being leased out at undervalued rates as currently obtained.

The power committee is also to ascertain the methodology used for liquidating the PHCN assets as well as ensure full compliance in the sale of properties sold and that such funds be transferred to the Federal Government’s coffers.

Also yesterday, members of the House, in a separate motion, moved to investigate DISCOs’ Billing System across the country.

The committee was directed to immediately start legislative input and report back within four weeks. This was sequel to a motion under matters of national importance by Rita Orji (PDP, Lagos).

Most members, including Toby Okechukwu (PDP, Aniri/Oji, Enugu), called for a closer scrutiny of the operations of DISCOs to confirm whether they were meeting the expectations of privatisation.

He said: “Every year, we buy transformers for our consti-tuencies; they  are taken away by DISCOs, when ordinarily they are the ones to provide them, and at the end of the month, you will still be billed for power not consumed.”