The Minister of Power, Works and Housing, Babatunde Fashola on Monday in Abuja met the operators and heads of power sector agencies at the inaugural sectoral meeting in continuation of the Transitional Electricity Market (TEM) where players relate on contractual basis.

The Permanent Secretary, Federal Ministry of Power, Mr. Louis Edozien said the monthly meeting would be an avenue for the leadership of the industry to lay bare all the constraints being experienced in the sector in order to proffer solutions to them one after the other.

Fashola noted that the idea behind the meeting was to hear from the operators in the industry for possible comprehension and the application relevant solutions.

He said ,

"Let me start by saying first that the idea behind this meeting is to listen to as much of the operators in the power industry as possible to understand what the unique problems are, to understand what the general problems also are and to develop solutions to them as in line with the Federal Ministry of Power and Housing or as in line with the agencies who are agencies of government . "

He said the meeting was to also do peer review and sharing for other Discos to hear what other Discos are doing , and get avenue to learn from their areas of strength and weaknesses .

He however appealed to the operators not to send representatives who cannot take decisions on behalf of their organizations to the monthly meetings that will be holding every second Monday of the month.

He dropped the hint that the essence of the meeting was to ensure that those who attend them either as teams, groups, take decisions, implement and them and remain committed to the resolutions.

The minister said : "I welcome those of you who have come. I also appeal to those who are not here to think about signing onto this platform. What we have also sought to do is to have at least one representative of each major Disco, Genco, power players in the industry, who can take decision on behalf of their organizations so it will do us very well to avoid sending representations, who cannot take decisions .

"The plan is that as a group, as a team, we take decisions and go and implement them and commit ourselves to those kinds of decisions."

Fashola revealed to the meeting that he had already briefed President Muhammadu Buhari and his Vice President Yemi Osibanjo who gave him the go ahead to commence it.

The minister said "what we have decided to do is that this meeting will hold every second Monday of the month so it is ceased calendar subject of course to any second Monday that falls on a public holiday. It will go to the next day after that Monday automatically.

“Let me say also that we have briefed Mr. President and Vice President about these meetings and we have their approval to convene them.”

Fashola said that the Federal Government was of the hope that since there are engineers, bankers and other professionals in the power sector, they could share all the problems and proffer solutions to solving them.

He submitted that "if our purpose is united, if our understanding is united, I don't see any problem we cannot defeat as a team."

The minister noted that the information at the meeting will centre on the issues about scaling up transmission capacity, decision on metering provision and others.

He said : "All the information will revolve around the major issues in the industry about what steps will be taken about gas, about what steps will be taken about ramping up transmission capacity, about what steps will be taken about distribution, about what steps will be taken about metering roll out.

“This meeting should be the information centre for every Nigerian for holding Disco, every Genco, every TCN accountable at various levels."

Reading out the 10 point agenda that the ministry has prepared, Permanent Secretary said the meeting is to centre discussion around 10 point sequentially Edozien explained that "The first point is public engagement, especially around the newly released tariff. It is something we all have to do collectively.

"The second point relates to issues on collection, payment and debts.  It also includes discussions on metering."

On the agenda were also, generation capacity and maintenance, ancillary services and dispatch order, procedure and discipline.

The fifth point was gas requirement and constraints while the sixth point  was transmission constraints and the seventh was 33KV load off take and imbalances- locations of excess and overload safety.

The eight agenda was quality of service while the ninth was new captive and embedded generation and franchising and the tenth was any other business.

Also present at the meeting were Minister of State for Petroleum Resources, Dr Ibe Kachikwu and  the Permanent Secretary, Power in the Ministry, Mr Louis Edozien.