The House of Representatives, Thursday, moved to probe the status and sale of non-core assets of Power Holdings Company of Nigeria, PHCN.
The House, therefore, at plenary mandated its committee on power to probe the matter and report back in four legislative weeks.
The House said since 2011, when PHCN’s non-core assets were transferred to the Nigerian Electricity Liability Management Company, NELMCO, for disposal in order to recover finances, they had been lying fallow, misappropriated and abused.
Adopting a motion by Chukwuemeka Ujam (PDP, Enugu), the House said the assets were supposed to be valued and later transferred for sale or put to use to recoup investments.
Just yesterday, members of the House, in a separate motion, moved to investigate DISCOs’ Billing System across the country. The committee was directed to immediately start legislative input and report back within four weeks.
This was following the motion under matters of national importance by Rita Orji (PDP, Lagos).
Most members, including Toby Okechukwu (PDP, Aniri/Oji, Enugu), called for a closer scrutiny of the operations of DISCOs to confirm whether they were meeting the expectations of privatisation.
He said: “Every year, we buy transformers for our constituencies; they are taken away by DISCOs, when ordinarily they are the ones to provide them, and at the end of the month, you will still be billed for power not consumed.”
Recall that the Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission recently fined Benin and Port Harcourt Electricity Distribution Companies (Discos) over their failure to comply with the decisions of Forum Offices rulings in complaints filed by their respective customers.
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