The Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission (NERC) has dissolved the Board of Kaduna Electricity Distribution Plc.
The commission also appointed Umar Hashidu as the Administrator of the company and appointed special directors to manage the company in the interim in line with Section 75 of the Electricity Act.
The company’s spokesperson, Abdulazeez Abdullahi, in a statement, said Hashidu has resumed office as the new chief executive officer of the company taking over from Yusuf Yahaya who resigned last week as managing director of the company.
NERC’s Commissioner for Legal Licensing and Compliance, Dafe Okpaneye, who presided over the brief handover ceremony at the corporate headquarters of company in Kaduna, also named Alex Okoh as Chairman as well as Kabir Adamu, Sharfuddeen Mahmoud, John Ayodele and Rahila Thomas as special directors.
The administrator and special directors are expected to manage the company in the interim and sell its assets to the highest bidder.
The regulator said it considered the company a ‘failing licensee’, hence it dissolved the board as backed by extant laws.
Kaduna Electricity Distribution Plc is one of the 18 successor companies established following the privatisation of the defunct Power Holding Company of Nigeria (PHCN) in 2013.
The company, which sells electricity to four states in the North-West geopolitical zone, owes N110bn to the Nigerian Bulk Electricity Trading (NBET) Plc and power generation firms. It was taken over by African Export-Import Bank (Afreximbank) and local lender, Fidelity Bank in July 2022 but it has struggled to improve its financial performance.