Some experts in the power sector have urged the federal government to, as a matter of urgency, review the privatisation of the power sector.

The experts who spoke to journalists in Abuja on Sunday said privatisation of the power sector was a good idea but was not working.

They said a comprehensive auditing and review of the sector would form part of efforts to address the challenges in the industry.

Privatisation of the sector in November 2013 was an initiative of the federal government to transfer ownership and management of power assets to private entities. The move was to improve efficiency, attract investments, and enhance electricity supply.

Eleven electricity distribution companies (DisCos) and six generation companies (GenCos) were formed after privatising the sector. However, the sector’s transmission arm was retained by the federal government.

Princewill Okorie, the national president of the Association for Public Policy Analysis (APPA), said the government should carry out a national audit of the privatisation.

Mr Okorie said the auditing should be carried out on investments made in infrastructure and the revenue collected from electricity consumers since privatisation began in 2013.

“Look at how much consumers have paid as tariff from inception till date and how much the investors have invested in the power sector,” he said.

According to him, when the sector’s privatisation took off, the conditions or criteria to be met by investors had not been met.

“It was not even done on a sincere note, and the data used was not correct. How can you privatise without adequate investment? And it was done in a way to make the citizens become cash cows.

“ Now, the citizens are the ones that are being exploited. What they call privatisation, in my opinion, is extortion from citizens,” he said.

Uket Obonga, the national secretary of the Nigeria Electricity Consumers Advocacy Network (NECAN), also called for a privatisation review.

Mr Obonga said privatisation was supposed to bring massive improvement and more infrastructure into the power sector, but nothing seems to have improved.

“ So where do we go from here? What are we really doing? The privatisation that was well conceived has not really worked. So let there be a deliberate review of the entire privatisation,‘’ he said.

Mr Obonga also urged the government to set up a technical forensic audit team to audit the power sector infrastructure.

According to him, Generation Companies (GenCos) have invested so much, and their capacity has scaled up to about 14,000 megawatts.

“ Government should ensure that any Electricity Distribution Company (DisCo) that does not have a certain amount of money to invest in infrastructure should not be allowed to continue to operate,” he said.

(NAN)