What’s being done to achieve incremental power? With provision of funds and determination to fulfill the promises made at the media briefing on incremental power, resuscitation of the 29 MW DadinKowa hydro-power plant in Gombe state should be completed in November, [/b]going by the assurance given to the Minister in March this year, by the project manager. The 132KV lines to evacuate the power are in place. The [b]40 MW Gurara power station is expected to finish in the first quarter of next year and with the arrival of its standardisation equipment, the 10MW Katsina wind mill is expected to finish before quarter two. The diesel and gas dual fired 215MW power plant in Kaduna is also expected to finish this year. There is also another power emergency project that President Buhari approved for General Electric to give 240MW of power in Afam, Rivers state. It is also expected to finish this year. The 40 MW Kashimbilla hydro power plant, in Taraba state, has been revived and now 99% completed . The works on the evacuation of power including transmission lines, switch yards and substations from the power plant to Takum , Wukari and the existing substation in Yandev is expected to be completed by the second quarter of 2018 subject to availability of funds.


Work has resumed on the 700MW Zungeru hydroelectric power plant in Niger State, which was stalled by litigation for over three years .The nation moves closer to achieving power security with more alternatives to gas fired plants. Work on the 450MW Azura power plant in Benin, was also stalled because the approvals and agreements required by the private companies to source for funds could not be signed for more than one year. President Buhari finally signed the required on assumption of office and this enabled the investors to commence construction. So also, the mambilla hydro plant, which had been on the drawing board long before the coming of this government. The minister in an interview with the Daily Trust last week explained that significant progress had been made in terms of project planning by working with various stakeholders and with a “no objection “ certificate secured from the Bureau of Public Procurement on Monday 19th June ,work is set to commence on this long drawn yet all important project.
Electricity Regulation Commission (NERC) and the Rural Electrification Agency board on the governance side as well as the NBET’s N701 billion two-year payment assurance guarantee approved to ensure that all those who generate power to the grid are paid . The minister has, in exercise of his powers under section 27 of the Electric Power Sector Reform Act 2005 directed NERC to permit four categories of customers to buy power directly from a licensee other than their electricity distribution companies, once they are dissatisfied with the performance of the latter. As Fashola puts it, “it is like going to Nestle to get your products directly instead of waiting for the distributor.

There is also a five-year plan to boost power transmission capacity to 20,000MW beginning from 5,500MW to 10,000MW in the next three years. The plan targets transmission capacity of 8,200MW by 2018 and 10,000MW by 2019. To achieve this, the federal government is working on actual numbers of transmission towers that would take the nation from 7,000MW to 20,000MW in each growth plan; how many kilometers of cables, wires, breakers and tons of steel would be required in each stage as well as securing right of ways, settle compensation issues and every other issue that could possibly impede the implementation plan. Meanwhile, 59 expansion projects are currently being worked on across the country. The various transmission projects under the National Integrated Power Project (NIPP) are also being completed.