Friday, November 1, 2013 will go down in the history of electric power development in Nigeria as the day when the private sector effectively took over the functions of providing electricity to Nigerians.
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It was a culmination of a process that took all of eight years after it was conclusively ascertained that government machinery can never succeed in providing Nigerians with reliable power supply.
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Apart from the inefficiency and corruption for which the defunct National Electric Power Authority (NEPA) and the now equally defunct Power Holding Company of Nigeria (PHCN) were renowned, state control of electricity, despite the mobilisation of over 2.5 trillion Naira ($16 billion) in building new power plants, could not advance the quantum of power production beyond the peak of 4,750 megawatts.
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The process of privatisation was painstaking, with a seemingly transparent and credible bidding process for the six unbundled PHCN companies consisting of six generating companies (GENCOS) and eleven distribution companies (DISCOS) sold to new private owners for about 400 billion Naira ($2.5 billion). It also involved the resolution of very difficult Labour issues, in which 47,000 workers of the defunct PHCN had to be paid off with about 384 billion Naira ($2.4b).