The Minister of Power, Prof. Chinedu Nebo, has expressed concern over the funding mechanism used to finance power projects.
The Minister is calling for a special intervention fund for the power sector, besides budgetary allocations.
Prof. Nebo, in an interview with some journalists in Abuja, said unless something serious happens to ensure power projects are not stopped midway, the sector was at the risk of total collapse.
He argued that power projects are very sensitive and abandoning them would lead to the failure of the whole process and meant a return to square one.
He said: “When Power Ministry begins a project, that project remains uncompleted until it is completed. So if you cut off the fund midway or two third way or three quarter way, they remain like that.”
The Minister said the federal government should consider sensitive projects as those of power when preparing budgets and disbursing funds to ministries.
“There should be a rethink even in our budgetary process whereby projects that are started must be funded. If they are appropriated, that they should be cash-backed; that’s what we’re asking for,” Prof. Nebo said.
Meanwhile, the Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of Power, Godknows Igali, has disclosed that President Goodluck Jonathan had approved the institution of an alternative funding mechanism for the successor companies of the Power Holding Company of Nigeria (PHCN).
This is to give the successor firms, comprising generation and distribution companies, stability till their handover to the preferred bidders.
Mr. Igali made this known when the Senate Committee on Power visited the ministry as part of their oversight functions, stating that due to the zero allocation to the PHCN successor companies in the 2013 budget, they have been having a hard time financing their operations.
The Chairman of the Senate Committee on Power, Philip Aduda, urged the ministry to ensure that all labour-related issues with the PHCN workers were settled before handover to the preferred bidders to avoid litigation or other problems that could affect the gains so far recorded by the privatisation exercise.
