Chineme Okafor in Abuja
The Transmission Company of Nigeria (TCN) has explained why it would contest a N47.6 million regulatory fine imposed on it by the Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission in December 2016 for failing to submit its annual audit report on time.
TCN also alleged that the poor state and widespread breakdown of distribution infrastructure of the 11 electricity distribution companies (Discos) in the country were responsible for their repeated rejection of electricity loads allocated to them.
The Managing Director of TCN, Dr. Atiku Abubabar stated these in Abuja when the transmission company held its management retreat.
He also disclosed that the TCN has received N28 billion out of the N30 billion approved for it in the 2016 budget, thus representing 90 per cent of the allocation to it.
According to the NERC, its fine was due to TCN’s failure to submit its 2013 and 2014 audited financial statements.
The commission stated that the company had up to two weeks from December 2, 2016 when the disciplinary order was signed by its acting Chairman, Dr. Tony Akah; and the General Manager, Legal, Licensing and Enforcement, Mrs. Olufunke Dinneh, to pay up the fine, adding that the fine would attract a five per cent interest every day after the due date.
NERC said that in failing to submit its audited financial reports, the TCN violated Section 63 (1) of the Electric Power Sector Reform Act, 2005, which stipulated that “a licensee shall comply with the provisions of its license, regulations, codes and other requirements issued by NERC from time to time.”
But responding to this at the retreat, Abubakar said: “In any situation when somebody is fined by a regulator, you have a room to appeal and we have filed our appeal to the regulator and they are looking at it.”
“We have reasons for not complying. Since TCN was operational from 2013, there has not been an audited report and so we took a bold step to provide four years of this audited report and engaged PricewaterhouseCoopers, a reputable company, to undertake this audit and you can imagine the level of data and documents they have to look at in other to provide these audit reports which is not just one year.
“We are doing it and in line with international financial reporting system which I believe most of the companies did not do, and based on that, the audit needs time. We informed the regulator that this is the reason why we have not filed the report but they went on to fine us,” Abubakar stated.
On Discos rejecting loads allocated to them, he explained that: “The issue of load rejection is still very much there as what is being generated, we still have issues that they don’t get fully distributed to the customers and some of the reasons are due to the absence of infrastructure at the distribution end to get it to homes.
“There are cases when distribution transformers pack up and are damaged but not repaired. This, I believe could be the reasons why the Discos are not able to take the loads that are given to them.”
