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By CHUKWUMA KELECHUKWU
President Muhammadu Buhari has tasked Siemens and other stakeholders in the power sector to work hard to achieve 7,000 megawatts of reliable power supply by 2021.
Speaking at the signing of the Electricity Road Map agreement between the Federal Government of Nigeria and Siemens on Monday, the president said the goal for the agreement was to deliver electricity to Nigerian businesses and homes.
“We all know how critical electricity is to the development of any community or indeed any nation.
“And in Nigeria, we are blessed to have significant natural gas, hydro and solar resources for power generation.
“We are still on the journey to achieving reliable, affordable and quality electricity supply necessary for economic growth, industrialisation and poverty alleviation,” Buhari said.
Continuing, he said “My challenge to Siemens, our partner investors in the Distribution Companies, the Transmission Company of Nigeria and the Electricity Regulator is to work hard to achieve 7,000 megawatts of reliable power supply by 2021 and 11,000 megawatts by 2023 in phases 1 and 2 respectively.
“After these transmission and distribution system bottlenecks have been fixed, we will seek in the third and final phase to drive generation capacity and overall grid capacity to 25,000 megawatts,’’ he said.
According to the President government’s priority is to stabilise power generation and gas supply sector through the Payment Assurance Facility, which led to a peak power supply of 5,222 MW.
He however regretted that the constraints remained at the transmission and distribution systems.
“This is why I directed my team to ask Siemens and our Nigerian stakeholders to first focus on fixing the transmission and distribution infrastructure, especially around economic centres where jobs are created.
“While it was evident that more needed to be done to upgrade the sub-transmission and distribution system, our government was initially reluctant to intervene as the distribution sector is already privatised,” he said.
He therefore stressed that no middlemen would be involved in order to achieve target goals, insisting that the agreement would be structured strictly under a government to government framework.
The president expressed the hope that with the federal government’s strong commitment to the development of Mambilla Hydroelectric and the various solar projects under development across the country, the long-term power generation capacity would ensure adequate energy mix.
He however warned that the project would not be the solution to all the problems there are in the power sector but expressed confidence that it has the potential to address a significant amount of the challenges faced for decades.
“It is our hope that as the power situation improves, we will improve investor confidence, create jobs, reduce the cost of doing business and encourage more economic growth in Nigeria,’’ Buhari stated in his address.
BADEJO ADEMUYIWA has 23 years experience as a Finance Writer, specialising in Insurance and Investigative Reporting.
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