By Emeka Mamah
The Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission (NERC), has blamed the lack of interest by private investors in power generation and distribution on what it described as the cheap price of electricity in the country.

NERC also said that it would soon address the situation by reviewing the Multi_Year Tariff (MYTO) which it formulated to “rebalance tariffs and make them cost effective”.

The Administrator of NERC, Mallam Imamudeen Talba made this known while speaking at the opening ceremony of a three-day seminar for “Judges on Regulation in the Electric Power Sector”.

He said that “access to electricity” in the country “is hindered by the fact that infrastructure is limited, and also because of the inability to generate enough power to meet the demand of the country”, just as the Chief Justice of Nigeria, Justice A. I. Katsina-Alu stressed that “any serious minded nation puts its power sector on a sound pedestal”. The Chief Justice was represented at the occasion by the  Kaduna State Chief Judge, Justice Rahila Cudjoe.

But, the Minister of State for Power, Arch. Nuhu Wya blamed the poor power supply on “increase in population and growth in per capita energy demand on one hand and the fact that available capacity falls short of demand on the other hand”, adding that these have invariably led to the decrease in access to electricity by Nigerians”.

Also, the Administrator of the National Judicial Institute (NJI), Justice Umaru Eri, who was represented at the event by Mrs. P. M. Ayua lamented the fact “that electricity has become the most pressing, but unfortunately most deficient of all infrastructures in Nigeria” as successive governments have had to grapple with intractable problem facing electricity generation, transmission and distribution”.

Justice Eri further noted that “today, the situation has degenerated as Nigerians rely on self help for power generation” and expressed the hope that there would be light at the end of the tunnel when the country begins to generate 30,000 megawatts of electricity by 2020 as promised by the Federal Government.

However, Mallam Talba lamented that the Federal Government inherited only “about 1,700 megawatts of electricity in spite of the installed capacity of 6,000 megawatts” from the military administration in 1998, pointing out that the old “MYTO which was formulated using a simple cycle turbine as a basis did not take into consideration generators using other types of turbines, and also other sources of fuel”

According to him, the “Commission is currently conducting a major review of the MYTO and also working on tariff for coal, and other feed in tariffs for renewable sources to diversify sources of supply”.

Talba further said that the “price of electricity has remained static since 2002” even as the prices of other items required for generation, distribution and transmission of power, like equipment, cables, natural gas, turbines, diesel among others had been on the increase, pointing out that “this is a  disincentive to prospective investors who desire to participate in our electricity market”.

The Administrator, however said that NERC would soon develop a new regulatory framework for “Embedded Generation” of electricity to encourage investors to connect their distribution networks directly to the consumers rather than through the national grid to save costs.

“This reduces cost of connection, avoids transmission use of network charges, ease of deployment, lower network losses, and access to huge generation capacity, increased participation by state and local governments and harnesses the abundant generation resources from renewable and non-renewable small scale sources.

“This gives better option to generators who do not wish to incur the additional cost inherent in connecting to the national grid.“It also enables generators to use the distribution network to deliver power to eligible customers”, he said.