THE Transmission Company of Nigeria, TCN, has cancelled many non-performing electricity transmission contracts. It stated that four of such contracts were cancelled in the last two months. It attributed the recent protest against the TCN management to the cancellation of the contracts.

Usman Mohammed, managing director, TCN, said the recent closure of the company’s premises by the Federal Inland Revenue Service, FIRS, was unnecessary. “We are not surprised at the claims made by the rented protesters and this is because we have cancelled so many contracts.

“We have cancelled many and even in the last two months, we have cancelled about four of them. I’ve cancelled those in Damaturu, Wudil, Walalambi, Dambata, Yawuri and many others. It is because they were not performing. Why should I leave them to continue the contracts? Look, some Nigerians make this place their farm and continue to collect money on every appropriation, which shouldn’t be,” he said.

According to Mohammed, the prices of most of these non-performing contracts were highly inflated, as some of the projects were eventually completed at rates that were about 10 times less than the initial contract sum. “Now tell me, how can, we have stable power supply with this kind of arrangement? Also, it might interest you to know that most of these contracts that we cancelled, we are going to complete them at the rate of 10 per cent of what the contract prices were.”

On the closure of the company’s office by the FIRS, he said, “The FIRS did an assessment some years ago before I came to the TCN and they came up with a claim that the TCN owed them N30billion. Now, if you look at the N30bn claim, it includes what we call legacy liabilities. But now the government is looking at how to take over these liabilities which were there before the sector was privatised.

“Also, we have constituted a committee to look into this as well. However, one of the problems that we have as regards this amount that they have against the TCN is that they took our projected revenue and reached a conclusion. But this cannot hold in the power sector because what we get as revenue at the TCN is less than 40 per cent of our revenue.

“So one element is the legacy liability and the second element is this bogus calculation based on what they think is our revenue. Yes, our revenue is there, but can we collect it? The answer is no because power distributors are not remitting. This is issue,” he said.

– Aug. 17, 2018 @ 11:29 GMT |