Finally the first station of the National Integrated Power Project (NIPP) has been commissioned.

kudos to Obj for completing the first power station to be constructed federally since the 70's

will this lead to improved power supply?

I suspect power supply rather than generation is more of the problem
How does all that electricity get to the consumer without theft, vandalisation, shoddy second rate infrastructure and poor maintenance and a host of other ills that blight effective power delivery in Nigeria

We are encouraged but we continue to wait and see

hhhhhhhhhhmmmmmmmmmmm!!!!!!!!!!

You sabi how many power plant them don commission for PH yet no light

P/H was done by some Odili crony called 'Rockson Engineering'

this is a Siemens built power plant, I trust them far more than some odili siphoning scam

@naijafresh, generation is a big part of the problem, thats why anytime there is problem with gas supply to egbin, the whole nation coughs

we need far more generating capacity so even if 1 or 2 plants shut down, the whole system doesnt collapse

the electricity generation by PHCN was 3000MW, this plant alone brings 414MW, a couple more of these coming onstream should begin to ease the problem.

I hope we see the effect of this.
I just realized that a lot of our infrastructures were built during the Gowon Regime and we're too busy spending money anyhow to update/rebuild them.
We needed this bad enough and we still need more even if they have to use other forms of power like solar power because that one will be more available to less developed areas with the problem of it being only available during sunny days but I think that's better off than no light at all.

.

President Obasanjo is not the fan of privatization that we thought he was. What a shame.

Folks - please give credit where its due, no matter how hard. This project is a plus to the
country's power problem (its not a negative). Please be objective for once. We will look
back in a few years to appreciate what Obasanjo has done for the country - wait and see.

Seun:

President Obasanjo is not the fan of privatization that we thought he was. What a shame.

erm if the private sector wont rise to the challenge what do you expect? These are the basic, most countries start with "something". starting things from scratch in Nigeria even with all the freebies the govt throws in is daunting!!

They might even (part) privatise this in the near future. 

By the end of the year i think our output would have doubled! esp with the others coming up i just hope there are not as dud as the odili one

This is a big plus to the OBJ administration.

On privatization, it will be disastrous if we allow private hands to run the most critical aspects of our lives like power as they will be priced outside the reach of the common man because the primary focus will be profit, profit and profit.

Today while we appreciate the gains of the GSM gradually the average Nigerian is spending a whole lot to communicate.

Atleast OBJ will be remembered for his contributions to Nigeria either good or bad

Generation of electricity is part of our power problem but it is not the only one.

Up to the Babangida adminstration,power generation in Nigeria surpassed power demand.We have a huge problem with distribution of electricity.

This problem can be solved with Govt deregulating the electricity sector and allowing private investors to generate and supply electricity.

The problem of costly power supply can be dealth with by the Govt subsidising the power companies in respect of residential users.Commercial users can be made to pay the full price.

There is the suggestion that allowing privatisation will hit Nigerians in the pocket.The current system hits Nigerians in the pockets even more.47 years of Govt mismanagement of the power sector should teach us that the Govt is incapable of running the sector.

@ Seun he's been advocating for the private sector to come in for years and they didn't. why? If you won't spend your money on something why would you expect someone else to?

this is a step in the right direction, we cannot wait forever for foreigners to come and develop the nation. when a good basis is laid with basic infrastructure, then the foreign investment will come in.

There are two more plants slated for commissioning before the end of this administration. kudos to Obj on this accomplishment.

Why would the private sector come in when the sector is not deregulated?

deregulation has begun, about 12 power generation licenses have been given out, investors are coming in to look at taking over some transmission and distribution sections of the power grid.

we can't wait till all that happens before we get a semblance of power supply, things should be kickstarted by the government and allowed to run.

It is a bad thing to allow private hands to handle very critical areas of our lives as profit will be the utmost concern and not service.

The cost of electricity will triple or worse if private hands are given the freewill to do what they want just like the GSM is making a lot of people spend over half their incomes on calls.

That the government has mismanaged the power sector due to corruption does not mean that they should handsoff completely.

Fighting corruption is a good way to reverse the frauds of the past.

Power distribution is not the major problem but power generation that is where a lot of areas are place on shifts. You cannot distribute when you have not generated.

Aren't PHCN already charging triple electrity tarrifs?
It can only get better and the service that can be provided by private companies will be better than present

If the power section is monopolized, they will continue misbehaving so i think it's best we just have different privatized companies so that competition will force reduction of prices. If we have options, just like the GSM thing, they will have no choice but try to make their individual services more efficient and way cheaper. If it's government, chances are they won't be properly managed even though the money will stay in our economy.

I think the power sector is already deregulated

The power sector is deregulated.

If the tarrifs are too high now, they will certianly get worse when private hands get into the mainstream just as we are paying way too much for calls today.

Fighting corruption and making things work is a far better approach than allowing private hands to determine what we will pay for power.

I doubt that

Fighting corruption alone cannot just automatically improve our power. It is going to help but it's not the only thing that's wearing our economy down.

Fighting corrpution will ensure that money meant for the power sector will be used in the sector to replace, maintain or buy new equipment as against the present style of awarding phoney contracts and siphoning the much needed funds into private pockets without anyone asking questions.

If corruption is greatly reduced today, basically every aspect of our lives will improve because the major problem we have today is corruption which encourages less than 2% of the population to keep what belongs to everyone.

Afam:

Fighting corrpution will ensure that money meant for the power sector will be used in the sector to replace, maintain or buy new equipment as against the present style of awarding phoney contracts and siphoning the much needed funds into private pockets without anyone asking questions.

If corruption is greatly reduced today, basically every aspect of our lives will improve because the major problem we have today is corruption which encourages less than 2% of the population to keep what belongs to everyone.

In making decisions on matters of national policy,reality is more important than "ifs".Sure,if corruption was greatly reduced,I would trust the Govt to revamp the power sector but 47 years of betrayal has thought me to accept reality

The reality is that the Govt has mismanaged every aspect of the country;education,power,policing,health,e.t.c,.I see no reason to belive that the immediate future is going to be better.

While we live in this reality,I would prefer the private sector to take over the running of our power sector with Govt providing subsidies to ensure low tarrifs for private consunmers.

The Govt has neither the resources nor the track record to manage the power sector.The money spent over the past without results acts as a tax on Nigerians.

President Obasanjo should resume his original plan of privatization of the power sector with immediate effect. ANything less than that is purely an exercise in perpetuating corruption. That's what he used to believe in.

Give credit to whom it is due - if past governments have done 1% of what OBJ is doing, then he wont need to be doing it now - power, telecomms, debt releif, corruption, reforms etc. If previous leaders were syphoning our money abroad and into private pockets and another leader came to return that money and use it to provide infrastructures, then kudos to whoever that leader is. If past leaders were mounting debts which our children would have continued to pay, and another leader came and God helped him to have part of the debt written off and the balance paid off, then that leader deseres kudos. If a leader accumulates 44billion dollars as foreign reserve for the country, then that leader deserves kudos. If previous leaders tried to root out corruption instead of institutionalising and anothe government came in to try - albeit try to root out the problem, then that leader deserves praise.

Politics aside, lets give credit to where credit is due, even if OBJ has faults and negatives, his government still has positive sides which deserves commendation.

I spoke my mind - dont abuse me if you dont agree with my opinion, i abused noone.

4 Play:


While we live in this reality,I would prefer the private sector to take over the running of our power sector with Govt providing subsidies to ensure low tarrifs for private consunmers.

@ 4 play, excellent point !   

This is what the govt is actually trying to achieve. Already, the law recognizing only NEPA as the sole power utility company has been abolished; private entities have been granted licenses to generate power. There is now an agency set up to regulate the private power sector (similar to how the NCC regulates communications).

The structural change is gradually taking place, but we are still far from reaching the promise land.

Seun:

President Obasanjo should resume his original plan of privatization of the power sector with immediate effect. ANything less than that is purely an exercise in perpetuating corruption. That's what he used to believe in.

Seun, the president has privatized the sector.  The problem is that, the private investors are not coming as quickly as we want them to and the government can't wait indefinitely. So OBJ had to commence with the building of new power stations, sub-stations and a huge transmission/distribution system.

Eventually, all of these power stations being built are going to be privatized. But we have to show potential investors that we are serious and provide an environment that is conducive for them to come and invest.


Related Link:

http://www.lahmeyer.de/e/units/ge/ps_ge4_e_230340_niger_delta_2006_10.pdf

i totally agree with 4play

let me also add that i cant imagine y we have this problem if we ar to believe OBJ and his cronies. they have told us that NEPA or whatever the company is called now generates twice what it did prior to 99. if that is the case, y is the power situation 10 times worse now than it was prior to 99?

also GSM call costs are high cos OBJ greedily auctioned the licenses and caused these companies to pay an unecessaryily high price, plus there is no regulation to guide the way they operate. they are allowed to get away with murder! forget NCC they are just sleeping dogs.

greedily - as if obj put the money in his pocket.

angel101:

i totally agree with 4play

let me also add that i can't imagine y we have this problem if we ar to believe OBJ and his cronies. they have told us that NEPA or whatever the company is called now generates twice what it did prior to 99. if that is the case, y is the power situation 10 times worse now than it was prior to 99?

also GSM call costs are high because OBJ greedily auctioned the licenses and caused these companies to pay an unecessaryily high price, plus there is no regulation to guide the way they operate. they are allowed to get away with murder! forget NCC they are just sleeping dogs.

@ angel101

The problem with Nigeria's power sector in 1999 could not be solved by simply increasing its output by that time by 100%. OBJ was ill-advised that once we generate 4000 MW, that'll be the end of Nigeria's  power problem. So untrue !

Nigeria's demand for power is in the neighborhood of 8,000MW - 15,000MW.  Some even say we need up to 20,000 MW because South Africa generates about 100,000 MW for its 45 million people.

Once the power is generated, we need to be able to move it to where it is needed. That is the Transmission part of the problem. Once it is taken to where it is needed, it needs to be stepped down and distributed to the end users (homes, businesses, factories etc). That is the distribution part of the problem.

The generation, transmission & distribution problems are all intertwined - you make no progress if you solve just one or two of them. All three have to be addressed equally.

I didn't mean to write too much, I just wanted to show you that OBJ wasn't being a crony when he stated that we are now producing twice what we were prior to 1999. Like I said, before we can see any improvement, we have to generate more, we have to build and upgrade our transmission capacity as well as our distribution capacity.

And to do this, you have to spend billions of dollars (the Geregu project just commisioned [this thread] cost 195 million Euros to complete), and it takes a tremendous amount of time (all of the equipment to be used to build power stations have to be manufactured from scratch).

Seun:

President Obasanjo should resume his original plan of privatization of the power sector with immediate effect. ANything less than that is purely an exercise in perpetuating corruption. That's what he used to believe in.

Impatient Nigerians are always complaining, and blame the government for everything. People will say govt has not provided power after 8 yrs of democracy and so on. If the private sector is not forthcoming, he needs to jumpstart the process so that people do not suffer unduly in between the change from public to private driven power supply. case in point is 17 refinery licenses given out and not a single private refinery being built 3 years later

to those complaining about tariffs, it is common knowledge that the amount spent by people running generators on fuel alone for 5 hours a day for a month exceeds the total amount they would pay for NEPA bills for 24hours supply in an equivalent period, not to mention the cost of the generator, the pollution, fire risk and all the other hassles that are involved this practice.

Tripling tariffs is an essential part of the plan if this thing is to be taken out of govt hands, afterall the private people will not be running a charity or at a loss as the inefficient NEPA/PHCN currently does, they mus make a profit to maintain the equipment and to increase supply along with demand.

all that income spent on generating power individually would be much better spent on other productive enterprises.

im not too sure if i agree with some of the stuff yall written here especially the one above?