Ifey Ikeonu (Mrs.) - Director
Ifey Ikeonu is a Lawyer and Energy Policy & Regulation Consultant with over 30 years of experience in the Nigerian and African Energy Sector. She has considerable experience in corporate strategy and project management. She has acquired skills in energy policy planning and management, public-private partnerships, electricity sector reform and regulation as well as energy access programmes in Africa.
Ifey was the Ag. Chairperson of the ECOWAS Regional Electricity Regulatory Authority (ERERA) between June 2015 and April 2016. Prior to that appointment, she was a pioneer member of the Regulatory Council of ERERA where she served as Commissioner (Legal) for a period of four years. During her tenure in ERERA, she was pivotal in developing the ECOWAS Directive on the Development of Regional Electricity and the fundamental regulatory framework and key documents for the regional electricity market such as the Regional Market Rules, the Regional Transmission Pricing Methodology as well as the West African Power Pool (WAPP) Operational Manual. She also facilitated a regulatory study on Benchmarking of Electricity Regulators and Operators in ECOWAS and the result of the study was instrumental in developing KPIs for performance monitoring of regulators and operators as well as establishing the basis for the Directive on the Organization of the ECOWAS Regional Electricity Market.
Before joining ERERA in January 2011, she held various senior management positions at the Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission (NERC) where she served as the Head of the Strategy and Project Management Office as well as Head, Legal, Licensing and Enforcement Department. She was responsible for the development of a monitoring framework and key performance indicators for the internal monitoring of the activities and work program of the various divisions within NERC to ensure compliance with the overall strategic plan and annual activity plans in order to improve NERC’s overall performance.
She was also responsible for developing the licensing framework for the power sectors operators in Nigeria and also had the tasks of monitoring compliance and enforcing the terms and conditions of the licenses. She also participated in the development of key Regulations in NERC including the Business Rules, the Multi Year Tariff Order, NERC Customer Complaints Handling Procedure and Customer Standards, Health, Safety & Environmental Standards as well as the Regulation on Captive Generation.
Ifey worked as in in-house counsel with the Power Holding Company of Nigeria (PHCN) for over ten years and was involved in the negotiation of various large scale power projects including the Power Purchase Agreement (PPA) between PHCN (Nigeria) and NIGELEC (Niger Republic), the PPA between PHCN and Ibom Power for 190MW as well as the Gas supply Agreement between Nigeria Gas Company and PHCN and the Revenue Cycle Management (RCM) contract between NEPA and various independent consultants.
Ifey played an active role in the power sector reform programme in Nigeria where she worked with the committee on the Legal and Regulatory aspects of the reform leading to the enactment of the Electric Power Sector Reform Act (2005).
She is involved in the Sustainable Energy for All Initiative where she has represented West Africa on several SE4ALL platforms on access to energy and has assisted both NERC and ERERA to develop the regulatory framework for attracting investment into the renewable energy sector. She is also an active advocate of gender mainstreaming in the energy sector and is involved in gender impact assessment in energy projects.
As an Energy Policy and Regulation Consultant, Ifey has considerable experience working with various funding partners, development institutions and financial institutions to structure investments and funding options for energy sector programs as well as public private partnership initiatives in the power sector in Africa.
She has been involved in a number of international consultancies including the EU funded Renewable Energy feasibility studies & demonstration projects in Zambia, the EU TAF solar power project in Wa, Ghana as well as conducting a market research on the suitability of partial risk guarantees for renewable energy PPP projects in sub-Saharan Africa. She has provided advisory services towards the operationalization of the Independent Regulatory Board for the East African Power Pool while also being part of Technical Assistance Team for the EU funded Project on the Improvement of Energy Sector Governance in the ECOWAS Region.
She has also assisted the Electricity and Water Regulatory Commission of Sierra Leone to develop a Regulation on Captive Power and is currently working with the Rwanda Utilities Regulatory Authority to develop a Regulation on Distributed Energy Resources.
She has also provided advisory services to companies in Nigeria desirous of obtaining operating licences from NERC, specifically providing legal and regulatory advice and licensing support to F.S.G. Power Integrated Resources Ltd for a100MW capacity dual fuel (HFO/Gas) thermal power plant to be located near Sapele, Nigeria.
Mrs. Ikeonu has also been involved in numerous capacity building programmes where she assists in building capacity of stakeholders in utility regulation, electricity markets, power sector contractual agreements, cross-border trading arrangements, renewable energy and gender mainstreaming in energy projects. She has trained stakeholders in the electricity sector in various countries all over Africa while also serving as resource person in several global electricity sector conferences and workshops. She currently acts as a resource person for the National Power Training Institute of Nigeria as well as the ECOWAS Regional Electricity Regulatory Authority on training programmes in Electricity Markets and Regulation.