Power to the people: NEPA strikes during VP’s address
Abuja - Nigerian Vice President, Jonathan Goodluck, experienced first-hand what millions of Nigerians goes through every single day, as the lights went out at a meeting he was attending in the federal capital, Abuja.
The Vice Prseident then proclaimed that frequent power cuts in Nigeria have become “embarrassing”.
During last year’s election, President Umaru Yar’Adua said he would declare a “state of emergency” in the power sector but little has changed.
A senior official gave the BBC shocking details of why much vaunted improvements have had little effect.
The vice-president was speaking after a power cut at a meeting in the Sheraton International Hotel in Abuja, where dignitaries were marking the 20th anniversary of the country’s road safety agency.
“It is a problem we have and we must solve. We are determined to solve it. It is not about Abuja, but the whole country and we must get out of this embarrassing situation,” he said.
President Yar’Adua fired his special assistant on power, Foluseke Somolu, last week. Mr Somolu served in the same position in the last government of Olusegun Obasanjo.
On Tuesday he announced a new target of increasing the amount of power generated to 6000 megawatts within 18 months.
The government has spent $16 billion dollars on building new power stations and trying to fix transmission grids in the last nine years, the speaker of the House of Representatives said last month.
But six power stations - already paid for by the government - are yet to be completed years after they were begun, a member of the committee set up to reform the power industry told the BBC.
Eighteen turbines worth $3 billion are sitting untouched in a Lagos port because the government has no way of moving them to the site of the power stations, he said.
“It’s been an embarrassment for nearly a decade. Some of the construction work on the stations is so delayed that after six years they have not even finished building the foundations,” said the committee member, who did not want to be identified.
“Only the president knows what the next move is,” he added.
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