Nigeria and Siemens Draw Up Roadmap to Boost Country's Power Supply
July 22 2019 - 11:41AM
Dow Jones News
By Obafemi Oredein
Special to Dow Jones Newswires
IBADAN, Nigeria--Nigeria's electricity goal is to "work hard" to
achieve 7,000 megawatts of reliable power by 2021, rising to 11,000
megawatts by 2023, President Muhammadu Buhari said Monday.
Speaking in Abuja at a meeting with Joe Kaeser, chief executive
officer of Siemens AG (SIE.XE), Mr. Buhari said the 7,000 and
11,000 megawatts respectively will cover the first and second
phases of the power-improvement initiative in Nigeria.
He said after transmission and distribution system bottlenecks
have been fixed, "we will seek--in the third and final phase--to
drive generation capacity and overall grid capacity to 25,000
megawatts, according to a statement from his office.
"I recall my meeting in August last year with Chancellor Angela
Merkel here in Abuja, when both our governments committed to future
cooperation to support economic growth and development in Nigeria,"
Mr. Buhari said. "We were clear that fixing the power sector was a
key priority for this administration."
He added that it was then that Mr. Kaeser committed to working
with Nigeria to develop a "feasible roadmap to modernize Nigeria's
electricity grid with support from the German government."
Mr. Buhari said that despite more than 13,000 megawatts of power
generation capacity in Nigeria, only an average of 4,000 megawatts
reliably reaches consumers.
The inadequate power results in regular blackouts in homes,
offices and industries and has stunted the country's economic
development.
"Our intention is to ensure that our cooperation is structured
under a government-to-government framework. No middlemen will be
involved, so that we can achieve value for money for Nigerians. We
also insist that all products be manufactured to high-quality
German and European standards and competitively priced," Mr. Buhari
said.
Write to Barcelona Editors at barcelonaeditors@dowjones.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
July 22, 2019 12:26 ET (16:26 GMT)
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