The Managing Director, Afam Power Plc, Mr Olumide Obademi, on Friday appealed to the Federal Government for adequate budgetary provision to enable the company remain competitive in the nation’s power generation market.
He made the appeal in Afam, Rivers State when principal officials of the Federal Ministry of Power, Works and Housing embarked on a facility inspection of the power plant.
According to him, the company should be properly funded by the government since it is yet to be fully privatized.
Obademi told the visiting ministry officials that the company had two functional turbines Gas Turbines (GT) 17 and 18 currently with a total output capacity of 110 megawatts (Mwts) from the Afam Four Power Plant.
He expatiated: “The Afam four power plant comprised of GT 13,14,15,16 17 and 18 with each installed capacity of 75 megawatts. Presently GT 13-16 are out of operation since Feb 14, 1996 due to various faults.
“GT 17 and 18 with a total capacity of 110 megawatts are back to grid for commercial operation on Sept 2017, having been out of generation since January 6, 2015 due to a burnt evacuation transformer.
“If GT 17 and 18 are working optimally and the grid managers allow us for at least one month to generate fully, I am very quite sure what we will generate cannot be less than N800 million”, the industry expert added.
Lamenting that illiquidity remains a major problem the company is facing, Obademi hinted that the little amount being generated by the company from energy generated was not fully paid for by the Nigerian Bulk Electricity Trading Plc(NBET).
He clarified further: “I want to reiterate that the fund challenge faced by the company is so enormous, as a result of the delay in concluding the privatisation exercise and emerging market rules. Because of the privatisation exercise, there is no budgetary allocation to the company since 2012.
“The company was surviving through internally generated revenue from energy generated in January 2015. But when the evacuation transformer that serves GTs 17 and 18 that evacuates power from the two available units got burnt, that left the company with no source of income.
“Since, there was no generation from Afam, no budget from the ministry and no other source of income, staff salaries with a total of 220 staff inherited from the defunct PHCN were accumulated,” he stressed.
He listed other challenges affecting the company’s operational efficiency and profitability as lack of spare parts, zero funding for critical projects, gas supply constraints, and pipeline vandalism, among other issues.
In her remarks, the Director, Investment and Sector Development in the ministry, Mrs Emontonghan Osaisai, explained that funding challenge remained a general problem, assuring however that the matter was seriously being attended to by the government.
On the issue of budgetary provision for the power generating company, she confirmed that the company was provided for in the budget and that some parts of the ministry’ budget was rolled over into the current fiscal year.
She said: “It is not that it is not included in the budget. It is just that there are some aspects of the budget that are rolled over because of dearth of funding, which we are all aware, it is still captured and it will be dealt with.”
Osaisai assured that Afam Fast Power Plant, which is 95 percent completed, would not be abandoned in view of its power generation potential, adding that “we need it , because you know that the present administration’s mandate on assumption of office is to ensure provision of incremental power.”
She explained that government had adopted some measures through its distribution and expansion plan that would help improve power distribution nationwide.
