Energy Briefs
THE Transmission Company of Nigeria, TCN, has said that the recent announcement of the plan to give Nigerians two months of free electricity as part of palliatives for COVID-19 is nothing more than a propaganda that cannot work. TCN faulted the announcement by power distribution companies that the Federal Government and the National Assembly would pay for the proposed two-month free electricity for customers.
Discos made the announcement through their umbrella body, the Association of Nigerian Electricity Distributors. Usman Mohammed, managing director, TCN, said, “There is this information that went round that power is going to be free. I don’t know where that information came from.
“But I can tell you that there is nothing like power is going to be free because the Federal Government cannot make power free. The Federal Government does not own the power.”
Mohammed explained that the Federal Government only owns the TCN, while the generation and distribution companies are largely owned by private investors. “In the electricity industry, apart from transmission, which is just the transporter, all the other chains do not belong to the Federal Government. So I cannot understand how somebody will concoct that information,” he said.
Mohammed argued that those peddling the information were merely sharing propaganda that would not work. “But these are some of the people involved in propaganda, who brand information that is very unnecessary, to be honest. I think at this stage what we need to do is to sustainably supply electricity and that is what we are doing,” he said.
The TCN boss further stated that in the last two weeks that most parts of Nigeria had been on lockdown, operators in the power sector had worked and performed well.
– Apr. 17, 2020 @ 17:07 GMT |
Tags: Free electricity mere propaganda – TCN
