We Have Evidence Showing How Mikano, Other Generator Assemblers Exploited Nigerians — FCCPC Boss

The Federal Competition and Consumer Protection Commission has revealed fresh evidence indicting Mikano, Jubaili Brothers, JMG and others for infringement of imports and manufacturing rules.

The Executive Vice Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of the FCCPC, Babatunde Irukera made the disclosure during a monitored interview on Arise TV.

The FCCPC had in 2022 launched investigation into the alternative power sector where they found price fixing for generators.

In December, the FCCPC said it obtained a search warrant order from the Federal High Court to carry out searches on Mikano and other generator assemblers.

In a fresh development, Irukera disclosed that the commission has downloaded several terabytes evidence indicting the companies on the allegation.

The FCCPC boss said, “We executed a search warrant simultenously on multiple operators in the industry at the end of last year. Usually, an investigation of this nature takes quite a while because first you have to step in and slice the information that you have. Several terabytes of information was downloaded from their computers, emails and telephones.

“We are analysing that information and some of what we see confirms the allegation But we will continue with that.”

He explained that the philosophy that is at the back of the FCCPC intervention in power is fundamentally because the sector is the largest cost of domestic lives- certainly industrial lives.

He said developing or generation, transmission and distribution capacity in the country will take longer time.

Currently electricity generation in Nigeria is less than 5MW which is far lower than the governments target.

Irukera said, “The least that the society should have expected is that they are not shortchanged even from with the respect to the cost of providing alternative power which typically is now renewable energy, but primarily generators.

“We got credible intelligence that in the generator sector there are few things that are going wrong. Number one, in other to address the generation, transmission and distribution deficits one of the things the government has done is to relax some certain rules with getting your own alternative power.

“One of them is eliminating duties with respect to CKDs which are completely knockdown parts to build generators and so, most generator importers bring in this completely knockdown parts and then assemble. The lack of duty makes it more affordable for the consumers and then also it promotes local industries in the sense that at least it brings a value added process domestically which is the assembly

“But the spare parts continues to attract duties. But what we saw is business that will import few engines in a container that will be dominated by spare parts and portray that as a completely knockdown parts thereby paying far less duty than they should.”