By ABAH SUNDAY, Abuja
The Transmission Company of Nigeria (TCN), has appealed to the National Assembly (NASS) to increase the budgetary allocation to the company to aid in the execution of its over 120 projects.
The Managing Director (MD), Engr Sule Abdulaziz, made the appeal on Monday in Abuja when the Senate Committee on Power paid an oversight visit to the company.
The MD lamented that the N2 billion which TCN got from the 2024 budget allocation could only pay compensation.
Hence, he pleaded for an increased budget, and urged the committee to also help in addressing the issue of right of way, advocating a law that would give the right of way to the projects.
Abdulaziz however, disclosed that vandalisation was a huge challenge hampering the projects in the North East and South East, and disclosed that the company was collaborating with a Chinese firm to build a super grid.
The TCN MD attributed the cause of grid collapses which has become so rampant in recent times to vandalisation, underfunding, and the absence of Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA).
Also speaking, an Independent System Operator (ISO) Executive Director, Engr Nafisat Ali, accused the DisCos of load rejection, saying that the development was one of the causes of grid collapse.
In his reaction, the Chairman of the Senate Committee on Power, Senator Enyinnaya Abaribe, disclosed that his committee would review the penalties for power assets’ vandalisation.
He explained that the members of the committee were on the oversight visit to TCN to find out the challenges that have led to poor supply of electricity to Nigerians and also the reasons for the consistent collapses of the national grid.
Abaribe, however, sought clarification about the installed capacity and wheeling capacity as often used by the TCN, describing as unacceptable the situation where Nigerians must rely on a private generator for their power needs.