The House of Representatives has cancelled all new capital projects planned for execution by the Transmission Company of Nigeria, TCN.
The House Commitee on Power reached the decision via a motion at it’s resumed budget defence session with Transmission Company of Nigeria.
The agency had appeared before the Committee to defend its 2021 budget proposals totaling over 165.89 billion naira.
It announced 14 new projects to be executed in next year’s budget.
But hardly had its Managing Director, Sule Abdulaziz told the Committee that there were numerous Projects left unexecuted over the years than the Zone Committee in its wisdom said it is counterproductive to introduce new ones when many previously awarded ones had not been attended to.
The details of the successive budgets, their performance and major capital projects between 2001 and 2020 as presented by Abdulaziz showed that TCN has a total of about 158 major capital projects awarded.
Out of the lot, completed projects are 39. These included 28 substations and 11 transmission lines.
Similarly, 25 projects have been completed and commissioned to service without outstanding payments to contractors.
A total of 119 projects between 0-95 percent completion are still ongoing.
There was also a total number of 28 projects at various levels of procurement just as 14 new projects were planned in year 2021 proposal.
The Managing Director told the house of representatives committee that utilization of the 2020 budget was slowed down by Covid-19 pandemic.
Meanwhile, the summary of 2021 budget proposals indicated that a total of over 165 billion naira was proposed.
The development unsettled the committee which eventually called for an urgent action to reverse what was perceived as an abnormal situation.
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The Committee reasoned that 4billion naira out of 165 billion naira was a far cry from what would be impactful.
(Editor: Nkoli Omhoudu)
