The House of Representatives Committee on Power, on Friday, declared that it would not permit the Transmission Company of Nigeria to give contracts to foreigners at the expense of qualified Nigerians capable of executing such projects.
It, therefore, directed the TCN management to consider local content in its project execution processes in line with the President’s executive order on local content.
The House Committee Chairman on Power, Magaji Aliyu, stated this when he led his committee members on an oversight function to the corporate headquarters of TCN in Abuja on Friday.
He said, “We are not going to allow you to be giving contracts to foreign nationals while we have Nigerian engineers. Nobody will give us loan and dictate whom to give the contract. The President wants to bring down the rate of unemployment.”
He told the new management of TCN that the oversight function was part of the routine of the National Assembly as captured in the country’s constitution.
“We are not here to intimidate; we are only here to ensure things are done properly. We have to commend TCN. So far you have done relatively well but there is room for improvement,” Aliyu stated.
The acting Managing Director of TCN, Ahmed Abdulaziz, told the Reps members that to strengthen the country’s transmission sector there must be some transformation in the system.
He said, “I want to begin by stressing that the journey to strengthening of the transmission sector must start with a critical transformation of the existing system, where the government, regulator and TCN management will all play core roles.
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“The government and the regulator would take the lead to create the right investment, while TCN focuses on implementing new technology, faster project execution and improving operational efficiencies.”
Abdulaziz added, “In order to drive growth in capacity utilisation, the immediate focus of the new TCN management would be on replacing or repairing existing equipment, which are failing and prone to breakdown.”
He said regular and proactive maintenance processes would be institutionalised to reduce the occurrence and impact of breakdowns.
The new TCN boss said his team would prioritise on expanding the company’s capacity through new projects that would span across the entire nation.
Abdulaziz said these were some of the considerations that would help in achieving the goal in improving the performance of the power transmission sector.
