$33m per month Azura power deal under inquest, as Reps invite Finance Minister, others

The heads of the Niger Delta Power Holding Company (NDPHC), the Bureau of Public Procurement (BPP), and the Ministers of Power and Finance have been invited by the House of Representatives to discuss a $33 million Azura power purchase agreement.

Other organisations invited are the Nigeria Electricity Regulatory Commission, Transmission Company of Nigeria, and Nigeria Bulk Electricity Transmission (NERC).

The heads of all the agencies were invited to a meeting in Abuja on Tuesday by Rep. James Faleke, Chairman of the House of Representatives Committee on Finance, which is looking into suspected contract violations and ongoing power outages around the nation.

Faleke stated that the agencies would be hauled before the committee to discuss their role in the power agreement and further stated that the impacted agencies would be informed of the proper date for their appearance before the committee.

On August 19, the committee learned that the nation had agreed to a take-or-pay agreement that required a monthly payment of $33 million.

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The Azura power plant, however, was found to have been unable to supply the national grid with the 450 megawatts of electricity agreed upon with TCN ever since the contract was signed.

Faleke instructed Mr. Sule Abdulazeez, the managing director of TCN, to submit the company’s budgetary allocation from 2002 to the present, as well as the contract it was awarded and the certificates it had issued for a power transmission line.

He claimed that if Azura was going to demand payment in dollars for power generated, Nigeria should do the same for power utilised from the national system.

The committee also requested TCN to provide its Internally Generated Revenue (IGR) for 2010 along with its audit report and pointed out flaws in TCN’s use of IGR outside of budgetary provisions.

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