Ebun Francis|
Nigeria and global energy giant, Siemens has signed a letter of Agreement on Nigerian Electrification Roadmap conceived to deliver 7,000 megawatts of electricity in 2021 and 11,000 megawatts in 2023.
President Muhammadu Buhari and the global Chief Executive Officer of a German company, Siemens AG, Joe Kaeser signed the agreement in Abuja on Monday in Abuja.
The agreement followed the decision reached by President Buhari and German Chancellor, Angela Merkel, when the latter visited Nigeria on August 31, 2018.
Before the signing of Monday’s agreement, several meetings involving Nigeria’s distribution companies (Discos), relevant stakeholders in the power sector and the federal government had been held with the focus on key area areas where the help of the German company would be needed to boost the activities of both the Transmission Company of Nigeria and Discos.
Such key areas will include software maintenance for four years that will be comparable to Egypt’s power project said to have been handled by Siemens and which helped in raising the North African country’s power generation by 40 percent capacity through the connection of 14.4 gigawatts to the Egyptian national grid.
At the agreement signing ceremony Monday, Buhari who told his guest that notwithstanding Nigeria’s capacity to generate over 13,000 megawatts of power, only an average of 4,000 megawatts get to consumers in the end.
The President, therefore tasked Siemens with the responsibility ensuring that 7,000 megawatts of electricity is produced in 2021 and 11,000 megawatts in its phase two by 2023.
Buhari said, “Our goal is simply to deliver electricity to Nigerian businesses and homes. 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.”
“Now, we have an excellent opportunity to address this challenge. This government’s priority was to stabilise the power generation and gas supply sector through the Payment Assurance Facility, which led to a peak power supply of 5,222 MW. Nonetheless, 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.
“Whilst 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.
“I am therefore very pleased with the positive feedback from private sector owners of the distribution companies, who have all endorsed government’s intervention to engage Siemens on this end-to-end plan to modernise the electricity grid,” Buhari said.
Buhari further said that with federal government’s effective commitment to the development of Mambilla Hydroelectric as well as various solar projects being executed in different parts of the country, “the long-term power generation capacity will ensure adequate energy mix and sustainability in the appropriate balance between urban and rural electrification.”
According to the President, the federal government’s plan is to ensure that the project is exclusively pursued between the two governments without the involvement of any middleman and with the overall objective of delivering quality services to Nigerians.
Buhari continued, “Our intention is to ensure that our cooperation is structured under a Government-to-Government framework. No middlemen will be involved, so that we can achieve value for money for Nigerians. We also insist that all products be manufactured to high quality German and European standards and competitively priced.
“This project will not be the solution to ALL our problems in the power sector. However, I am confident that it has the potential to address a significant amount of the challenges we have faced for decades.
“Ladies and Gentlemen, 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.”
With agency report
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