A former Chief Executive Officer of Transmission Company of Nigeria (TCN), Eng. S. Akinwumi Bada, has been appointed as the interim Managing Director of Abuja Electricity Distribution Company (AEDC).
His appointment follows the dismissal of the management earlier this week by President Muhammadu Bihari.
The Bureau of Public Enterprises (BPE) announced the appointment in a statement issued by Amina Tukur Othman, Head of Public Communications, BPE, on Thursday, December 9, 2021.
The statement indicated that the Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission (NERC), the power sector regulator, has approved the appointment of the interim management team.
Other members of the team are Sani Usman as Interim Chief Business Officer, and Babajide Ibironke as Interim Chief Finance Officer, Donald Etim as Interim Chief Marketing Officer, and Femi Zachaeus as Interim Chief Technical Officer.
NERC and BPE had sacked the former management team of the AEDC and approved the appointment of an interim team to manage the power distribution company on the basis of legal processes arising from the failure of the core investor to meet its obligations to a lender.
Chairman of NERC, Sanusi Garba, in approving the appointments, said the development is in pursuance of the earlier fit and proper review of your (BPE’s) pool of nominees and in the context of business continuity frame work of the Nigerian Electricity Supply Industry (NESI)”.
“NERC and BPE, in a joint statement on Wednesday, signed by Sanusi Garba and Alex Okoh, Director General of BPE, stated that there had been an ongoing dispute amongst competing factions of AEDC’s majority shareholder/core investor KANN Utility Company Limited (KANN).
“The dispute eventually spilled over with the lender that provided the acquisition loan to KANN for the acquisition of majority shares during the privatisation exercise in 2013, over KANN’s inability to service its debt to the bank.
“The United Bank for Africa (UBA) had acted as Mandated Lead Arranger, underwriting the entire facility of US$ 122 million (about N20 billion) for KANN Utilities acquisition of AEDC.”
BPE said that during the course of the intractable crisis, AEDC not only struggled to meet its obligations to the market under the terms and conditions of its licence but was also unable to meet its obligations to key stakeholders in the organisation, including staff.
This, it said, culminated in the industrial action by members of the Nigerian Union of Electricity Employees (NUEE).
“Eventually, this resulted in a total service disruption on Dec. 6, for over 14 hours in AEDC’s network area.
“The provision of electricity supply in AEDC’s network area was only restored after the intervention of the Minister of Power, NERC and BPE following an agreement with the union on the terms for the suspension of the industrial action on Dec. 6.
“The public should note that arising from KANN’s inability to service its loan and the ensuing dispute over the servicing of the loan from UBA PLC, the lender exercised its rights by appointing a Receiver/Manager over KANN.
“Stakeholders, including NERC, Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), and the BPE had on several times worked to broker an amicable resolution between the contending parties.”
The statement added that the protracted resolution of the dispute exacerbated the state of affairs at AEDC, resulting in an industrial action and a total blackout in the service area for over 14 hours.
It said that it then became apparent that decisive steps were required to address the matter and BPE agreed with the lender’s request to exercise its powers as Receiver/Manager over KANN by exercising its powers over the 60 per cent equity in AEDC as a means to recovering the acquisition loan granted by the bank.
“The action to appoint an interim team to manage AEDC was not done on the basis of a directive from the Federal Government but on the basis of legal processes arising from the failure of the core investor in AEDC to meet its obligations to a lender.
“The receiver/manager has agreed to the appointment of an interim management team in conjunction with BPE as part of measures designed to address business failure events and ensure continuity of service to end-use customers in the service area.”
Profile of Bada Akinwumi
Engr. S. A. Bada is the CEO of Szotyola Energy International Services
He holds M. Sc. Telecommunications Engineering from Technical University of Budapest, Hungary
He joined the services of the National Electric Power Authority (now Power Holding Company of Nigeria) in Kaduna, Nigeria in 1984 as a member of the first group of professional telecommunications engineers recruited into the company.
He rose to the position of Assistant General Manager (Communications) – the first in NEPA – in 1999 and was deployed to the National Control Centre of the power utility. In this capacity, he was head of the telecommunications maintenance group of the utility.
The group consisted of telecommunications and SCADA which is a supervisory, monitoring and controlling tool for grid stability and reliability.
He was later redeployed to the Operations Sector of the utility at Corporate Headquarters.
Upon promotion to General Manager in 2002, he was transferred to the Transmission Sector of the utility.
There he was saddled with the following responsibilities amongst others: Setting off and compliance monitoring of utility-wide grid operational standards; Grid telecommunications, System Control And Data Acquisition/Energy Management System (SCADA/EMS).
He later got promoted to the position of Executive Director (System Operations), in which capacity he functioned as the System Operator of the Nigerian National Electricity Grid. He participated actively in the development of the Grid Code of the Nigerian Electricity Grid.
As Executive Director, he was seconded to the Presidency in 2010 and appointed as Senior Special Assistant to the President on Power Transmission and System Operations. In this capacity, he worked with the Presidential Task Force on Power as Senior Performance Monitor (Transmission and System Operations) till 2011 when he was appointed Chief Executive Officer, Transmission Company of Nigeria
Source: https://energynewsafrica.com