Joseph Bakare
The Federal Government has taken fresh steps to enhance capacity of the transmission sub-sector of the Nigerian electricity value chain to boost electricity transmission across the country.
To achieve this, the government has signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with some Chinese companies at where the Minister of Power, Professor Chinedu Nebo, tasked the companies to fill in the gap, so as to boost the nation’s capacity to wheel generated power to end users.
At the event the minister also identified the critical role of transmission, saying that it was needless if generated power that could not be used.
While calling for more foreign investment, the minister identified the Chinese as special people that had capacity to identify opportunities.
According to him, we will continue to support and defend your interests and investments here, just as he requested the Chinese to do even more in terms of investing in the sector, adding that in the area of renewable energy, a lot of opportunities still existed.
Professor Nebo counselled the Chinese to build synergy with distribution and generation companies, as they could build mutual relationship in the area of embedded or generated power within a locality and get such distributed through the distribution companies in the area.
Speaking after the signing ceremony, Mariam Olusola Akomode, chairperson of Cartlark International, assured the minister that the company would move along with the transformation agenda of the administration.
“For a country like Nigeria that is in a hurry to develop its critical infrastructure, the private-public partnership (PPP) model is a viable option,” adding that its company would explore PPP to finance its transmission projects as planned.
Representatives of SinoHydro Nigeria, Gan Yongzhi, said his company was ready to promote the project in line with the agreement signed, assuring that the project would be realised on record time.
