By Williams Smith, reporting from Abuja
Following a request by Sahara Reporters alleging violations of some provisions of the law in the procurement process by the management of the Transmission Company of Nigeria (TCN), contrary to that allusion, no such thing has happened—at least not with the astute management in place at TCN. This clarification was contained in a statement released by the General Manager of Public Affairs, Mrs. Ndidi Mba, and sighted by our reporter. She said clearly, that instead, the management had followed all due process in the discharge of its functions to ensure unrestricted electricity supply to Nigerians, despite the difficulties involved.
The General Manager explained that Section 43 of the Public Procurement Act 2003 was self-explicit quoting the portion as follows: “A procuring entity may for this Act, carry out emergency procurement where the (a) the country is either seriously threatened by or confronted with a disaster, catastrophe, war, insurrection or act of God; further to that, she said the section agreed that “the condition or quality of goods, equipment, building, or publicly owned capital goods may be seriously impaired unless necessary action is taken to maintain them in their actual value or usefulness!”
Mrs. Mba while throwing more light on the alleged infractions revealed that Nigerians ought to know; that in the discharge of its sacred mandate, TCN management has had to find ways to overcome multi-prone obstacles such as the scourge of insurgency and most unfortunately vandalisation, including swampy areas, forests, over flooding which causes erosion and natural disasters. “All these threaten transmission and the affected towers must be quickly repaired to forestall the partial or total collapse of the national grid”, she disclosed, adding that TCN transmits power from over 25 Generating Companies located at different parts of the country to eleven (11) Distribution Companies and some international costumers.
Continuing, she said “It was pertinent for Nigerians to know that the TCN has over 18,000km of 330kv and 132kv high voltage transmission lines and transmission towers traversing the entire nation to deal with”, and declared that the TCN has always displayed the highest level of competence and professionalism, especially with the significant signing of the ‘Service Level Agreement’ between it and distribution companies(Discos) across the country on zero level tolerance for outages amongst other things. Moreover, she categorically refuted the claims that contracts were awarded to unqualified contractors stressing that TCN has in place the necessary Technical, Legal, Audit, and Procurement departments to ensure that those things never occurred; the departments ensured that all those qualified satisfied the requirement of providing valid Company Profiles, Tax and detailed other documents.
“It is impossible for any underhand practice to take place in TCN not to mention contravention of rules”, said the General Manager. According to her, TCN operates within the ambit of the law for which all ratifications for the smooth running of its operations are received per the law. “It is in the light of this that in line with section 42 of the Public Procurement Act 2007, for direct procurement, TCN obtained official approvals from the BPP for the projects Sahara Reporters allege weren’t”, she stated.
The General Manager cited two otherwise severe incidents that would have plunged the nation into unnecessary darkness but for the timely application of the special procurement process. “The incidents occurred on the 21st and 28th of December respectively in Katsita Village Yobe State and Maidugiri-Damaturu highways in two separate states; the one was as a result of vandalism while the other was due to insurgency for which the TCN had to mobilize resources to tackle the challenge”, she said stressing that without the emergency procurement process, the affected areas would have been thrown into prolonged darkness. Of late, the TCN has come under negative criticism despite the huge challenge and the strategic effort to stabilize the electricity supply.
