By Dwelleth Morountodun
The Federal Government and a German infrastructure provider company: Siemens, have struck a deal to up the country’s electricity supply by 7000MWs in 2021.
While tasking Siemens and the Transmission Company of Nigeria (TCN) on the supply of electricity, President Muhammadu Buhari, said the incremental deployment is expected in 2 phases, first of which is 7000 MWs in 2021 and upping it to 11,000MWs by 2023, even as he stated that electricity supply was a serious concern to his administration.
He added that negotiation with Siemens started when he met with Angela Merkel in 2018 in Abuja where Merkel made the commitment to support Nigeria’s in it’s electricity drive.
Buhari, said: “We all know how critical electricity is to the development of any country. In Nigeria, while we are blessed to have significant natural gas, hydro and solar resources for power generation, we are still on the journey to achieving reliable and quality electricity supply to stimulate economic growth, industrialization and poverty alleviation.
He stressed that the several attempts to solve the problem the challenge through exploring state funded solution through the I’ll prepared National Independent Power Projects (NIPP).
The President explained that the various interventions to solve the electricity problem had produced a disequilibrium between what was needed and what was produced.
He lamented that despite the 13,000MWs generated which has remained partly stranded, only 4000MWs is being distributed to Nigerians which is inadequate.