Federal Govt Approves Governing Board For NELMCO

Director general, Bureau of Public Service Reforms (BPSR) Mr Dasuki Ibrahim Arabi, has thanked the federal government for approving the constitution of the Governing Board for the Nigeria Electricity Liability Management Company Limited (NELMCO).

In a statement issued by the principal information officer of the bureau, Umar Aliyu Umar, he said, “The approval followed our recommendation on the need for the board, after we successfully deployed the self-assessment tool to NELMCO, as part of our mandate of reaching out to all Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs), in order to ensure their proper reform, in line with the commitment of the present administration.”

BPSR had certified NELMCO after it fulfilled and met the necessary requirement in line with the self-assessment tool (SAT) adopted by the bureau, scoring NELMCO 86 percent for its transparent operations and liabilities management.

According to Dr Arabi, the self-assessment was an opportunity for agencies to recognize their weaknesses and strengths as it will help guide them in service delivery.

He said, “As I said, the self-assessment tool is giving them the opportunity to see their weaknesses and see their strengths. We have jointly assessed the agency, we have noticed lots of issues and problems that they need to address, we have guided them, we are going to provide a team of resource persons including our in-house resource persons that will help them implement recommendations, and after six months we will come back to see how far they have gone. But, as I said, NELMCO is one of the points of success in public service delivery in Nigeria. We are happy with what we are seeing, and we are celebrating them.

“We want to see a revolution in public service delivery, and improvement in quality of public service delivery and in consonance with the open government partnership that Nigeria is committed to, open service delivery just as the charter says,” Arabi added.

Justifying how they were able to get the nod of the federal government to constitute the board, the managing director of NELMCO, Mr Adebayo Fagbemi, recently told journalists that it was due to its ability to save N91 billion and clearing liabilities of the defunct PHCN that accumulated before its privatisation in 2013.

The new board will be headed by the minister of finance, budget and national planning, Zainab Ahmed and has other members such as minister of power, Aliyu Abubakar; director-general, BPE, Alex Okoh; and director-general, Debt Management Office, Patience Oniha, the managing director, NELMCO, Adebayo Fagbemi, all executive directors of NELMCO and two private sector members.