GAMCO to the rescue?
•Strengthening power transmission infrastructure makes eminent sense It’s a solution, though we await how it would eventually pan out. Now, if transmission is the weakest spine of Nigeria’s ever-shambolic electricity
•Strengthening power transmission infrastructure makes eminent sense
It’s a solution, though we await how it would eventually pan out. Now, if transmission is the weakest spine of Nigeria’s ever-shambolic electricity supply -- and by Jove it is! -- it’s very logical to fix that spine, before consolidating other building blocks.
That’s the promise of the proposed Grid Asset Management Company Ltd (GAMCO), the child of a presidential memo, just tabled before, and approved by, the Federal Executive Council (FEC). If pulled off, it might be the missing link in the Nigerian power sector conundrum.
On March 4, at the FEC meeting, President Bola Tinubu had presented a memo to establish GAMCO -- which was just as well. For all the administration’s great strides in re-building the economy, there has not been a correspondent huge leap in power. Yet, giving Nigerians a far better power deal was one of his campaign pledges.
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It’s not as if power has terribly regressed compared with pre-2023 level. It’s just that it’s the usual one-step-forward, another-step-backward that has been the power story.
Bluntly put: predictability is still a bridge too far, even with the pocket-apartheid tariff regime of the elite Band A, down to the electricity-wretched-of-the-earth Band D. If power supply is so manifestly unstable, how can the sector make a headway, and the economy get a healthy jab in the arm?
So, proposing GAMCO shows excellent self x-ray by the Tinubu administration, on a sector that will more or less decide its legacy. This fresh thinking is highly welcome. But the challenge is for the inter-ministerial committee set up to flesh it out to bolt out from the blocks, and achieve positive results in record time.
That 11-man committee, chaired by Femi Gbajabiamila, the chief of staff to the President, include the power minister, the Minister of Justice and Attorney-General of the Federation (AGF), the finance and works ministers. Others are the ministers of aviation and aerospace development; communication and digital economy; science, technology and innovation; Minister of State (Petroleum), the Nigeria Revenue Service (NRS) chair, and Prof. Yemi Oke, an energy expert. Dr. John Ezeamama, Permanent Secretary of the Cabinet Office, is the committee’s secretary.
Though the committee does not have a fixed deadline to wrap up its assignment, it should understand the urgency of its pressing task, without sacrificing quality.
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Still, given its multi-layered tasks -- reviewing the extant laws in the sector, recovering as much trapped power as possible, and developing, post-haste, a new Benin-Lagos 330kV+double-circuit transmission line, directly linking the power-generation hub of the Niger Delta to the industrial belt of Lagos and the South West -- the committee might be around for quite a while.
But it must remember that it’s not GAMCO -- only its forerunner. So, it must make the birthing of GAMCO, as fast as possible, its top priority. In the birthing months, however, it must share with the public important milestones, so we could all follow.
From a report in ‘The Nation’ -- “GAMCO: Power grid solution to Nigeria’s electricity challenge” (March 12) -- GAMCO is conceived as a private sector player, which shares are held by the Federal Ministry of Finance Incorporated. That structure is to cut out needless public sector bureaucracy from its operations -- hardly unwise.
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But the other short-term goal is for GAMCO to target the three gas-powered National Integrated Power Project (NIPP) plants: Omotoso, Olorunsogo and Ihovbor. Their joint installed capacity is 1, 775 megawatts (mw) -- and GAMCO will, in its first two years, help to wheel no less than 1, 600 mw of this dormant power, to the national grid.
That is not a bad strategy for a country with a generating capacity of no less than 13, 000 mw, but can only wheel no more than 6, 000 mw!
The GAMCO opening strategy is wise: while the long-term Nigeria-Germany Siemens national grid upgrade is on, fix as much of the decrepit transmission assets as possible. Sound strategy. But what will make the difference is sound implementation.
That’s the onerous task before the GAMCO 11-man committee -- and in record time too!
