The Senate says, there was no law governing the operations of the power sector in Nigeria currently, but noted that a comprehensive Electricity Act is being worked on and would be out towards the end of this year or in the first quarter of 2022.
Chairman, Senate Committee on Power, Senator Gabriel Suswam, says this on the side-lines of a stakeholders’ roundtable by legislators and judiciary on the enforcement of technical standards and regulations in the power sector.
The roundtable was organised by the Nigeria Electricity Management Services Agency to enlighten the lawmakers and judiciary on the roles and responsibilities of NEMSA in Nigeria’s power sector.
Suswam says, in 2004 when the then government wanted to decouple the sector, they needed an enabling law to allow them do that. And so what was put in place, the Electricity Power Sector Reform Act, was just for the purpose of that decoupling.
After that, one would have expected that a proper Electricity Act would have been put in place because new entities emerged completely from the old ones. And so there’s no law as it were now that actually governs the electricity sector in the country.
I addition, they are trying to put up an Act that comprehensively covers all sectors of the power industry. New issues have arisen from those entities that have been taken over by private companies. Those issues need to be addressed in the Electricity Act, just as is done in other climes.
Suswam stated that the Senate was also going through the Electricity Acts of Egypt and Morocco, where they had well developed laws for their power sectors.
The senator further pointed out that the CEO of NEMSA had raised concerns that there had been conflict between the mandates of NEMSA and the Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission and that these issues needed to be clearly spelt out.
