By Eyo Nsima
The National Council on Privatisation, NCP, yesterday, handed over the Aba ring-fenced area, to the management of Geometric Power.
The handing over was done through the Bureau for Public Enterprises (BPE) at the event in Abuja ended the tussle with the Integrated Electricity Limited, a core investor in Enugu Electricity Distribution Company (EEDC), thus ending battle over the rightful owner of the asset.
It was gathered that the trouble dated back to 2013 following the privatisation, which culminated in Interstate Electric acquiring 60 per cent of EEDC from the BPE.
As a result of the exercise, the distribution licence was issued to EEDC over five states in the South-east, including the Aba Ring-Fenced Area granted to Aba Power Limited (APL).
Following this, EEDC became the licensee of the Enugu Distribution Area while APL remained the exclusive licensee of the Aba Ring-fenced area, thus creating a conflict between the two licences.
The director-general of BPE, Alex Okoh, said the NCP worked hard to resolve the matter.
Specifically, he said: “The bureau initiated a series of engagements with various stakeholders, which led to one the signing of the agreement between Geometric Power and Integrated Electric Limited, the core investor,” he said.
“I am pleased to announce that we are handing over this asset to a tenacious, very, very tenacious investor who has made a firm commitment to transform the Aba Ring Fence area into a model electric supply franchise, providing quality, stable and appropriately priced electricity to consumers, thereby unlocking the significant economic benefits of this commercial and industrial hub of the regional and national economy.”
Similarly, the chairman of the company, Barth Nnaji, further said: “The other government sold what was rightfully ours to the people who acquired EEDC. So, they simply bundled Aba as part of EEDC. It was done knowingly. That is why we went to court, and we’re grateful this administration resolved the issues.
“We’ve paid the acquisition price of $26 million. I used to be on the other side of the fence and what we said during that time was that anybody that’s acquiring a DisCo should have the financial capacity or technical capacity, and was that’s what he brought in.
“We have made the necessary investments required to not have any issues in terms of reliability of power supply. So, we have invested about eight times the amount of the acquisition already.”
He also said: “We have built new substations. We built new power lines, over 140 kilometres of new lines; we built four brand new substations. We’ve built gas pipelines with seven kilometres to ensure that we have gas uninterrupted from Shell to us, etc. So, all these things we’ve done and the whole idea is to ensure that the network is what it is supposed to be.”
