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afrol News, 13 May - Nigerians eagerly discuss the planned privatisation of their National Electric Power Authority (NEPA), and express concern this might disrupt the rural electrification programme. Experiences from other countries' privatisation programmes had documented the problem of combining commercial and developing aims. Already in July 2000, the Nigerian government had announced it would start the privatisation process of NEPA. "The tariff structure will be adjusted so as to remove the electricity subsidy in urban areas within three years," Martins-Kuye, Nigerian Minister of Finance, thus wrote the International Monetary Fund (IMF). "With the assistance of the World Bank, by end-June 2001, the national power company (NEPA) will be restructured to create self standing companies; these will subsequently be privatised." Meanwhile, Nigeria has broken with the IMF, but the federal government is still pursuing the privatisation of NEPA. President Olusegun Obasanjo has put great personal prestige in the project after several earlier privatisation failures. Obasanjo claims the NEPA privatisation is necessary to fulfil his promise to double power output in Nigeria by year's end. Set up in 1972, NEPA is known in Nigeria for the poor level of service it offers Nigerians, subject to frequent lengthy power outages. Still, in the Nigerian opinion, the NEPA privatisation is seen as an "abandonment of government's social responsibility," according to trade unionist Precious Kiri-Kalio. A recent two-day National Conference on Rural Electrification in Abuja especially focused on the privatisation of NEPA (which also had organised the conference). The conference concluded that the "government should put into consideration, the interests of rural dwellers in the execution of the privatisation policy." Kiri-Kalio has pointed out a row of reasons why trade unions should resist NEPA privatisation. Among the most important were the announced hike in electricity prices, the expected job losses and the loss of control of a sector of key importance to development. He demands "the state must assume its developmentalist and protectionist role." The Nigerian National Assembly is expected to pass the bill on Power Sector Reforms within short, opening the privatisation path for NEPA. When the bill passed is into law, NEPA will be broken down into several companies focusing on the three core functions of the authority - generation, transmission and distribution, according to the Bureau of Public Enterprises, which has prepared the bill and oversees privatisations in Nigeria. Sources: Based on Nigerian press and govt. and afrol archives
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