The elixir Nigeria needs to continuously grow her economy is electricity, which has impeded the growth of other sectors. Former Minister of Power, Professor Barth Nnaji, in this interview with Adeola Yusuf, expresses frustration over neglect of the power super grid scheme approved by the Federal Executive Council (FEC) six years ago. He also laid bare his feelings about power sector’s privatization, which will clock five years in a few weeks’ time. Excerpts:

About five years into privatization of the power sector, what is your assessment as minister that began the process? Is anything wrong with the structure?
There is nothing wrong with the structure. The things that made us to privatise the generating and distribution strata of the sector, why are they preventing us from privatising the transmission? Now the reason for privatising the generation strata is that the units in the various generation plants were not producing, so, we needed investment by the buyer to recover the entire asset. For example, if it is a power plant with installed capacity of 900 Mega Watt, but it is producing 200 Mega Watt, then you will need huge investments for it to begin to produce the 900 MW and when this is achieved, the country is going to be the beneficiary of that. So, that is where that value chain comes in.

Read more...http://energyworthonline.com/2018/07/03/how-efforts-to-fix-nigerias-power-sector-was-frustrated-founder-geometric-power-prof-barth-nnaji/