Stratex Pro Convenes 2015 Electricity Market Summit in Abuja

2015 Electricity Market Summit held today 20th August in Abuja. The theme: “Charting a strategic Course for the Nigerian Electricity Market for Improve Productivity and Competitiveness Post 2015 elections”. This is towards achieving workable/strategic plan of actions and implementation strategies in addressing persistent challenges facing the power sector in Nigeria.

The summit is an initiative of Stratex Pro, a leading organisation in strategic planning and implementation headed by Noel Akpata who is also lead convener of the summit in collaboration with other organisations such as Palladium, SUSMAN & Associates amongst others. Akpata said this summit is first of its kind in Nigeria where key individuals and major players/stakeholders in the power sector are brought together in a forum of this sort in order to seek lasting solution to problem of epileptic power supply in the country. “The summit will be holding annually” he alluded.

According to Dr Shamsudeen Usman, Chairman SUSMAN & Associates who is also the Chairman Electricity Summit Market 2015 said in his opening remarks that the summit would help us as consumers and stakeholders to deliberate and come up with necessary mechanisms that would help to identify the problems and provide solutions instead of amplifying the problems. “We need mechanisms that would help in tracking results and performance in the power sector, it could be in form of power contract for instance, if power failure persists in the country then the Minister of Power should give way, this approach has worked in country like Canada, he alluded.

Former Minister of Power, Barth Nnaji, one of the panelists said current situation of power sector calls for proactive approach since electricity is all about value chain from gas supply to power station to power generation, distribution and consumption.

Permanent Secretary, Ministry of Power, Dr Godknows Igali representing Minister of Power highlighted several developments and achievements as well as challenges in actualising goals and objectives of Ministry of Power. “The GDP of a country is determined by per capita consumption of electricity” therefore it is so critical to every aspect of our lives that is why we are exploring other sources such as coal, solar and bio-feul all these are long term projects, he posited.

Sam Amadi, Chairman, NERC identified major challenges confronting power sector to be modelling and implementation challenges. “There is no critical capability to implement” he explained.

Stephen Dike, Executive Director, Disco Enugu in his recommendations said among other things one of the ways Nigeria can achieve reliable power supply is the political will and determination of Nigerian government to allow the market to bear the cost of power supply and distribution. “Now that we have seen that private sectors have failed woefully in power distribution that is the only way out” he affirmed. He also added that government should put in place mechanisms that would compel MDAs to pay their electricity bills.