NERC: We Are Against Foreign Influence In Power Sector

The Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission (NERC) has commenced the implementation of a new law that will efficiently regulate the deployment of foreign equipment, workforce, and other services in Nigeria without allowing them to dominate operations in Nigeria’s electricity market.

NERC explained that the law titled: ‘Regulation on National Content Development for the Power Sector,’ was enacted in 2014, but its implementation was started this month.

It explained that going forward, electricity distribution companies (Discos); generation companies (Gencos) and the Transmission Company of Nigeria (TCN) would have to abide by the minimum local content standards in the regulation.
NERC’s implementation of a local content law in the power sector is modelled after the local content law in Nigeria’s oil and gas sector.

Speaking Thursday at a workshop organised by NERC on local content regulation in Abuja, the Minister of Power, Works and Housing, Mr. Babatunde Fashola, lamented that the electricity sector has remained vulnerable to the vagaries of foreign services, especially with regards to transactions often executed in the United States dollars against the naira.

Fashola said it was necessary for Nigeria to begin to develop local capacity in the power sector to cut down its dependence on foreign equipment and services.

He added that NERC’s local content law was also in line with the federal government’s Executive Order 5 enacted in 2018 to promote the use of Nigerian content in contracts and services in the country’s engineering and science sectors.

In his speech, NERC’s Chairman, Prof. James Momoh, said at the workshop that the implementation of the law would be immediate, adding that operators in the sector were expected to abide by it or risk regulatory sanctions.
Momoh noted that the expectations of the commission were contained in the schedule of the local content law.

According to the schedule, which was obtained, NERC expects Gencos to fully engage local manpower in the construction of foundations for power generation turbines, transformer plinths, control rooms and cable trenches as well as other civil works for power plants.

Source: This day