Federal Government owned power firm, the Niger Delta Power Holding Company has said that the Central Bank of Nigeria, the Nigerian Bulk Electricity Trading Plc, and the Nigerian Electricity Liability Management Company owe the sum of N190bn for electricity supply.
Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer, NDPHC, Chiedu Ugbo, revealed. According to him; the estimate was arrived at as a result of debts owed for electricity supply to the tune of N190 billion from 2015 till date.
The N190 billion debt, he said was owed by the government agencies from 2015 till May 2023 He added that NBET owed the bulk of the debt, although he did not state the exact amount.
“Huge indebtedness by the market to NDPHC runs into hundreds of billions, N190 billion as of May for unpaid invoices. NDPHC is also not paid for availability but only as dispatched thereby depriving NDPHC of hundreds of billions since 2015 when the Transitional Electricity Market was declared, and the government has so far been denied revenue as high as N3trn,” he said.
Ugbo explained that the debt had made it difficult to meet some of its obligations such as operational expenditures including stock of spares, payment to gas suppliers, and others.
“Since we are being owed, we can’t also pay our gas suppliers and they too won’t supply us gas. Gas is what we use in generating power, and if we can’t generate; we can’t sell. The name plate capacity of our ten plants is 4000MW. We have the capacity to generate as much as 2000MW but we currently generate 975MW,” he said.
