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The Group Managing Director of Sahara Power Group, Mr. Kola Adesina, Core investors in Ikeja Electric and Egbin Power Plc, has given fresh insights on the N701bn intervention fund from the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) and called for more.

In an interview, he said “The intervention fund was a fantastic, noble gesture, but it is a temporary solution to help resolve the shortfall in the system. It is meant to provide succour, confidence to both the gas suppliers and the generation companies”.

“Government in its wisdom decided for two years, starting January 2017 to December this year, about 33 generation companies and their gas suppliers are to be paid 80 per cent and 90 per cent of their invoices.

According to him, “There is no sentiment or bias in it. It is clear. The only thing that happened was that a new entrant came on stream, who is to be paid a 100 per cent of the invoice with a take-or-pay clause and given first right of power dispatch, which appeared to have distorted the projection and amount due to generation companies”.

“My advice is that government should provide more funding to pay generation companies for full capacity, generation from new entrants and revenue assurance for the period post December 31st, 2018.

On intervention fund for the Discos, Adesina made it clear that “the intervention fund is not for us but for the customers”.

“The tariff that they have mandated us to charge the customers is not enough; the gap is what the fund is meant to augment. That is why they call it an intervention fund. The N701 billion was not targeted to give succour to the discos.

On why Discos were unable to take up all generated megawatts, Sahara Group boss averred that “We desire to supply everybody electricity because that is the reason we are in business. There is something they call effective demand. Effective demand requires effective supply as they go together. But where you have ineffective demand and you want effective supply, it doesn’t work”.