The lack of adequate manpower development is largely responsible for why the efficiency in the nation’s power sector went down, director- general of the National Power Training Institute of Nigeria (NAPTIN), Reuben Okeke has said.
He disclosed that the huge gap which has existed since 1990 when power sector training started going down has had a huge effect on the sector.
Okeke who was spoke with journalists at the NAPTIN training centre in New Bussa, Niger State, said: “Because the huge gap existed, right from 1990 that training went down, it has had a huge effect on the sector, though it is not very obvious to a lame man. But to a large extent it is what was responsible for the dismal performance of the power sector,” he said.
He maintained that 50 per cent of what was responsible for the sector’s poor performance was not just because the country did not have the generating capacity, but because it lacked the human capital.
“You? have to be well informed to know how to mange the little that you have, and if you don’t have that knowledge, it will be difficult for you to manage.
“If somebody who does not know when to switch power on and off, does it wrongly, once you mar the operation, it’s going to cause outage.? So those of us that has been in the power sector, especially in distribution can tell you that 50 per cent of why the efficiency of power sector went down was because of lack of training,” he said.
Okeke noted that if people were?? well trained, they would know how to manage the little power as well as the infrastructure available. “You will know what will be the effect of not maintaining a distribution transformer along the street as at when due. I rose to become the? chief executive officer of the largest distribution company in the country and the longest serving one, so I should be able to tell you authoritatively that lack of training has resulted in the poor power sector,” he stressed.
While noting that NAPTIN has since 2009 trained 3,998 power sector workers, he stated that the huge human capital gap has to be breached if government wanted? to? get the power sector on the right track to perform
“Our training covers all category of workers, most especially the lines men, the cable joint men, as well as the district sub-station operators and electrical system operators who work 24 hours a day,” he said.
?He explained that these category of workers, if not well trained, could distabilise the system when carrying out wrong operations, and the error? could? even result in the death of somebody.
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