FG Plans Increase In Power Supply To 10 States

The Federal government has announced plan to boost power supply to 10 states considered as economic centres to enhance economic activities nationwide.

The Minister of Power, Prof. Bath Nnaji, announced this at a press conference organised by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) in Abuja.

The conference was organised as part of activities to celebrate 50 years of Capital Market regulation in the country.

“We are going to be increasing power supply as we get additional power to some key economic centres in the nation. And this is to quickly stimulate economic development in certain economic centres in the country like Kano, Lagos, Onitsha, and so on. There are many of them; about nine or 10 of them.’’

He said that the 10 states would see a significant stability in power supply soon.

“Nigeria has the greatest loss in Gross Domestic Product (GDP) because of power outages.

“We believe that we can add about three and half or four per cent to GDP growth if we didn’t have the power cuts that we have in Nigeria.

“This is based on actual studies and not us doing something from our heads.’’

He said that government was focusing on building new hydro, gas and coal-fired power plants, regretting that it was unfortunate that even with the huge coal reserve in the country, Nigeria was yet to establish a coal-powered power plant.

Nnaji noted that with the renewable energy drive, the up grid locations would have small hydro, solar, wind to power plants, noting that the regulatory commission had put fitting tariff to the projects.

The minister said that independent distribution networks could be established in the locations to enable them  operate independently.

“We are inviting the investment community to come here and invest. We anticipate that between now and 2020, in order to meet our Vision 2020 goal, we will need at least 50 billion dollars of investment. And the government simply doesn’t have it and investment must be able to come from Nigerian investors and international investors. The role of the Securities and Exchange Commission in making a robust market to ensure that we get this money is critical.’’

Commenting on money invested in the power sector from 1999 to 2007, he said: “I do not know, you have to take responsibility for what you know.”

He said that between 2007 and 2011 certain amount of money went to power from the excess crude account, adding that the money was invested in the National Integrated Power Project (NIPP).

“I will say that more than N5 billion dollars went into buying of turbines between 2007 and 2011.”