By Musa Adamu
President Goodluck Jonathan is set to commission the 90mw power plat situated in Magboro, Ogun state.
Minister of power, prof. Chinedu Nebo, who made this known during the ground breaking ceremony of the plant, said the President resolve to commission the plant soon enough was part of his efforts to improve electricity production in the country.
He said the President was committed to changing the living standard of all Nigerians, informing his commitment to the power sector.
“To lift the country to the next level we must eradicate poverty by creating the enabling environment for businesses to thrive. It is very critical to pursue the generation, transmission and distribution of electricity as the very fulcrum of national development.
“The president believes that to give Nigerians not only adequate but also qualitative power supply is very cardinal to his mandate. “He believes that this is his contract with Nigerians, a covenant that he was determined to enforce.
“The president knows that he must take Nigeria to another level. Past administrations left the power sector to rotten, very little was done in terms of infrastructural development as regards power generation and distribution. Very little was also done in our communities. Luckily, the country started the National Integrated Power Project (NIPP) that was what has given us a lifeline in times like this,” he said.
The Minister also expressed the federal government desire to see more Nigerians invest in the power industry to address the protracted electricity problems in the country.
Hesaid government would want to see more Nigerians, especially those involved in the oil and gas sector, built more power plants to increase supply to the national grid.
He said investments in the sector should not be left in the hands of few Nigerians, stressing that the snags in the sector required that more people go into the electricity generation and distribution.
“Bresson AS Nigeria, the company behind the 90 mw power plant has promised to increase the megawatts to between 250mw to 300mw in the next few years. This shows the commitment of the company and the Ogun state government to make the area more industrialised.”
Also speaking, the Chairman,Bresson A.S Limited, GbengaOlawepo,informed that the project was conceived 10 years ago before the power reform programme.
“Since then, we have invested over $10 million without any return. We are not going to wait for ten years before we switch on the lights in this project, by the grace of God in 12 months we will be commissioning the first phase,“ he said.
