‘Nigeria losing millions of naira to non-evacuation of generated power’

The Niger Delta Power Holding Company Limited (NDPHC) on Thursday said it was losing several millions of naira on power it generated but could not be evacuated by distribution companies.

Yakubu Lawal, spokesman of NDPHC, said this during an interview with NAN.

“NDPHC has capacity to generate more power but cannot generate according to its capacity because distribution companies do not have facilities to evacuate this power being generated to the national grid,” he said.

“This un-evacuated power causes NDPHC a lot of money.”

Lawal said NDPHC paid for gas supply to run the plants, and paid both the staff stationed at the sites and the insurance companies.

He said there had been improvement in power supply because act of pipeline vandalism had been minimised and good infrastructure put in place by the government.

He listed the infrastructure to include generation, transmission and distribution.

He added that 275 distribution sub stations had been built across the country but were waiting for commissioning by the government.

He said when commissioned, the stations would be handed to the distribution companies to use and manage.

Lawal said NDPHC had built transmission lines which will also be handed over to the TCN to manage, adding that the company had also built seven generation plants out of which five were commissioned by the previous administration.

He said NDPHC was managing the plants for now but would hand them over to distribution companies when privatisation issue had been concluded.

He explained that government was going around the country to ascertain the state of the plants.
Lawal listed Calabar, Ihovbor, Ogorode, Geregu, Alaoji, Omotosho, Olorunsogo as the power plants that had been completed while Gbarain, Omoku and Egbema were almost being completed.