“We are working with distribution companies and transmission companies to clear the bottlenecks to ensure that we reach the end users,” Ugbo told State House correspondents, shortly after he led the company’s management to an inaugural board meeting with the Vice President, Kashim Shettima at the Presidential Villa, Abuja.
In early August, reports emerged that two electricity distribution companies, Eko Electricity Distribution Company and Aba Power Limited Electric, suffered power outages due to the unavailability of gas.
The reports claimed that the NDPHC had no gas to power 10 plants, leaving customers in pitch darkness.
However, the company’s media adviser, Adesanya Adejokun, debunked the allegations saying “The outage was a direct result of scheduled maintenance on gas facilities conducted by our suppliers.
“What you see is that the whole grid is challenged by offtake evacuations from transmission and offtake by distribution and if the distribution is not able to take what the distribution can carry; the transmission cannot take what you generate.
“But we are working assiduously to ensure end-to-end from generation to end users. We equally have distribution interventions all over the country, in all the states, to ensure that we improve the capacity of the distribution companies.
“Right now, we are working with Eko and Ibadan distribution companies using bilateral sales. So, we sell directly to them. Thankfully, the ones we are selling and some of them are paying us as and when due.”
The company’s MD explained that he is also targeting industrial consumers who, by the National Electricity Regulatory Commission’s regulation, can take two megawatts and above.
“We are supplying them and working on supplying more,” he added.
On efforts being made to address the company’s challenges, Ugbo said, “The federal, state and local governments have spent a lot of money in terms of the assets which have been developed on behalf of Nigerians.
“We have been charged to optimise the assets for the benefit of Nigerians. We need maximum performance of the assets, particularly the power generation assets, with gas limitations.
“But we also have transmission and distribution limitations. We are a government investment and we will work with the relevant stakeholders to make sure we resolve these challenges and that the load from these power plants is off-taken for the benefit of Nigerians.”
Ugbo added that the requirement to resolve a government debt that the company still owes is a systemic issue that will also be addressed.
He said “It is a systemic issue in terms of collections from the distribution companies to the Nigeria Bulk Electricity Trading and N-BET paying us.
“Because of that, we owe some gas companies as well. But I think the regulatory commission with the Federal Government are working on that to resolve it within the shortest possible time. Yes, we’re being owed, no doubt.”
