The House of Representatives on Friday said it would not allow the
Transmission Company of Nigeria to give contracts to foreigners at the expense of qualified Nigerians capable of
executing such projects. It, therefore, charged 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, said 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 his guests 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.
“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.