By Musa Adamu
Abuja
Chairman of the Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission (NERC), Sam Amadi, has denied a media report suggesting that he said the incoming government has power to cancel privatisation policy of federal government in the power sector.
Reacting to the said media report captioned: “Nigeria: Buhari Can Cancel Power Privatisation- NERC boss,” Amadi said the caption was taken out of context of the interview he granted.
He said the position of the media report does not reflect his position and that of the commission.
He said: “The NERC and its CEO believe in the sanctity of the privatisation. The spirit and intent of establishing the Commission remains the implementation of the Electric Power Sector Reform (EPSR) Act 2005.
“NERC has in the last four and half years recorded telling landmarks in the implementation of the power sector reform, especially with regards to the privatisation exercise.
“Because of its principled implementation of the reform programme, NERC has received both national and international accolades as one of the major drivers of the power sector reform. The NERC CEO could not at this point in a way suggest any form of reversal of a privatisation he spearheaded.
“The NERC CEO granted an interview to some reporters on the outcome of NERC’s meeting with the CEOs of distribution and generation companies on the state of supply of electricity. At the interview one of the reporters asked whether it is possible to reverse a privatisation.
“The NERC CEO pointed out that ‘although privatisation is not the problem of the sector’, that the new government has a responsibility “for making policies. In which case it can change existing policy, review existing policy or vigorously pursue existing policy”.
“The NERC CEO further pointed out clearly, “from my understanding of the two political parties, their policies are in line with the framework of the national electric policy issued in 2000 by the PDP-led government which is clearly premised on privatisation and securing the financial viability of the sector as a way of improving power supply by sustaining investment
.”
He recalled that in the said interview he also had a course to say: “For me, it is not about privatisation because it is not the problem. We are in a new modern economic world where we think about the straight-jacket and one of the new straight-jackets is privatisation or public-private-partnership depending on how you choose to call it and which explains that government may not be the sole producers of public goods and services and in many cases should not produce goods and services directly.
“But there are still residues of socialist and welfarist economic thinking where some people think that no matter how, government should still be in charge of producing public goods and services but every government is at liberty to go through the literature and once that philosophy is accepted it has a ripple effect on other policy areas especially in something as significant as power.”