ICRC, NEMSA To Resuscitate Transformer Repair Facility
The Infrastructure Concession Regulatory Commission (ICRC) and the Nigerian Electricity Management Services Agency (NEMSA) are collaborating towards reviving the transformer repairs and testing workshop located at the Ijora Olopa area of Lagos State, through a Public Private Partnership (PPP) initiative.
The Director General of ICRC, Mr. Chidi Izuwah, made the disclosure on Tuesday, during a facility tour of the facility.
He called for private partnership in addressing Nigeria’s infrastructure deficits, saying his visit to the facility was on a pre-contract monitoring, to see how to ensure all moribund federal government facilities were revived through private partnership investments.
Izuwah reiterated the importance of the workshop facility to the Discos, saying it would afford quick fixing of failed and bad transformers in the sector as well as generate employment for Nigerians.
According to him, “we have resolved and made commitment to put back to work, the transformer repairs and testing workshop through the PPP in power sector.”
“The electricity in the country has challenges but we need to intervene in the infrastructure chain of the distribution segment.
“We are regulating a process by ensuring that all government moribund workshop and facilities are revived to commence operations.
“This transformer repairs and testing worship is a national asset, so, we are working to ensure effective regulation that will encourage PPP.
“ICRC will fast track PPP initiative to revive the country’s transformer workshops for the benefit of the nation, which is in line with the Next Level Agenda of President Muhammadu Buhari.”
Izuwah, however, lauded the Managing Director of NEMSA for ensuring effective regulations in curbing substandard electrical equipment in the power sector.
He said the strategic objective for the ICRC was to accelerate investment in national infrastructure through private sector funding, by assisting the government of Nigeria and its Ministries, Departments, and Agencies (MDAs) to implement and establish effective PPP.
In his remarks, the NEMSA MD, Mr. Peter Ewesor, said the rehabilitation of the transformer workshop would attract more investors and create employment for Nigerians.
Ewesor, said that if the workshop was revived, it would develop indigenous engineers to embark on repair and assembling of transformers locally.
According to him, there are well over 700,000 bad transformers around the country, because there was no workshop to repair the infrastructure.
“NEMSA has ensured that all imported transformers that failed to meet specifications were rejected from coming into the country.
“In the last few months, we have disallowed about 68 transformers which failed specifications into the country,” he said.
Ewesor added that the agency was also collaborating with the Standards Organisation of Nigeria (SON) to check the influx of fake and substandard electrical materials and equipment into the country. He said the agency had raised a 12-member committee to check importation of substandard electrical equipment into the country.
“Contractors who indulge in such practices feel they are cheating the country but they are cheating themselves because once such equipment fails, they will be forced to reinstall it again,” he said.
He said the committee comprising five officials from SON and seven from NEMSA was to help trim the flow of substandard equipment and also sensitise the suppliers on the dangers they pose to the use of electricity across households.
