A Professor of Energy/Electricity Law, Professor Yemi Oke,has advocated the need for the amendment of the Electric Power Sector Reform Act(2005),saying it was not designed to operationalize the power sector but to midwife the reform.
Oke,who disclosed this in his note on 10-point reform agenda for the nation’s power sector,also said the Act contains 200 errors
According to him,the Federal Government and Nigeria Electricity Regulatory Commission should have nothing to do with licensing 1 M/W as contained under the EPSR Act of 2005.
He said It should be scaled-up to 5-10 M/W to allow sates undertake licensing and regulation of 0-10 M/W.
The Nigeria Electricity Regulatory Commission,he said, is unconstitutional and should only exist for grid-based generations, transmission and distribution .
He suggested that states should be involved more aggressively and begin to license for off-grid generations, transmission and distribution including setting-up of state regulators in the country.
He added that the Federal Government should back-off from all forms of off-grid regulation and scrap Rural Electrification Agency/Fund and cede to state governments.
He advised that electricity distribution,generation companies and other entities should be cross-licensed in their states of operation for small-scale power generation, distribution and transmission.
The university don lamented that the nation’s power sector is overregulated and emphasized the need to make it self regulatory.
He added:”The current “regulatory surplusage” should be streamlined into two or three comprehensive bundles of regulation by the NERC as against having separate regulatory frameworks to regulate the arms, legs, head, etc of the power sector. I suggest two or three comprehensive Regulatory documents would do, and could be periodically reviewed and updated to add or remove obsolete provisions for new ones without legislation.
He noted that another round of re-acquisition and refinancing in the power sector is inevitable on account of certain challenges in the sector.
