The Bureau of Public Enterprises (BPE), says is is exploring best strategies on the reformation of the Transmission Company of Nigeria (TCN), with the aim to unbundle it.
The BPE said under the planned unbundling, TCN operations would be broken into components, the operator and business sides.
The director-general, Alex Okoh, made this known on Thursday during a webinar tagged, “Financing Public-Private Partnership to Boost Infrastructure Delivery in Nigeria.”
The TCN is one of the 18 companies unbundled from the defunct Power Holding Company of Nigeria (PHCN) and manages the electricity transmission network. It is presently wholly owned and operated by the government, and its activities include electricity transmission, system operation and electricity trading.
During the webinar chaired by Ahmed Zainab, minister of finance, budget and national planning, Okoh said “That is the only segment of the power value chain yet to be reformed by BPE. We have privatised or reformed generation and the PHCN legacy on generation companies and downstream privatisation.
“These are the models we are looking at, in strong collaboration with the ministry of power. The next stage is the unbundling of the system itself and whether to unbundle along regional lines or business disco franchise area.”
He said the agency would soon approach the council on privatisation on what best works.
In his remarks, managing director of TCN, Usman Mohammed, while pointing out that mistakes were made with the privatisation of the power sector, said reversing the process and reclaiming the DisCos would send a wrong signal to foreign investors.
The finance minister said the government is ready and willing to dialogue and inculcate viable suggestions from stakeholders.
“The webinar is to hear directly from you (stakeholders) on what areas government can invest in and deliver value for money.
“President Buhari is committed to developing the country’s infrastructure and urging local and foreign investors to invest in Bureau of Public Procurement projects in Nigeria.”
It would be recalled that in 2013, Nigeria privatised the power sector with the distribution (DisCos) and generation (GenCos) sub-sectors sold to core investors.
