power generation.
It equally disclosed that N1.5bn was lost yearly to vandalism.
This is just as President Goodluck Jonathan would soon commence
inauguration of completed power projects across the country.
This disclosure was made at a joint press briefing by the Minister of
Power, Professor Chinedu Nebo and Benue State Governor, Gabriel Suswam
at the end of the last meeting of the Board of Niger Delta Power
Holding Company (NDPHC) Ltd, held at the vice presidential wing of the
presidential villa.
The meeting was chaired by Vice-President Namadi Sambo.
According to Nebo, Jonathan's administration had achieved minimum
electricity generation capacity of 5,500 megawatts, despite
unrelenting sabotage of oil and gas pipelines by vandals.
He noted that government was losing N120 million monthly and N1.5
billion yearly to repairs of vandalised pipelines.
Nebo stressed that deliberate vandalism of pipelines every two weeks
resulted in the nation losing about 1,600 megawatts of electricity at
a particular time.
The minister charged the incoming government of Major General
Muhammadu Buhari (rtd) to step up security surveillance of the
petroleum pipelines in the country, as well as consider the
digitalisation of the surveillance system.
"Four power plants have been completed and will be commissioned in the
next couple of weeks; Sapele is one of them, Ihobor is another one.
And hopefully and by the grace of God, we intend to do the
commissioning very soon so that Nigerians will enjoy even more, the
benefits of what the current administration has done in the power
sector.
"There are literally hundreds of other projects that need to be
commissioned. So very soon we are going into commissioning exercise"
Nebo said.
Suswam said "The board resolved to commission some of the numerous
projects under the NIPP programme. Those projects are to be
commissioned in the subsequent weeks."
Apart from the new power plants, he stressed that the government had
completed more transmission lines, but would not be able to complete
some sales transactions because of some complications in the bid
process and inadequate gas supply.
The inability to seal the sale transactions deals, Suswam explained,
were not due to fear of the unknown when a new government comes on
board next month.
Managing Director of the NDPHC, James Olotu, noted that the company's
2013-2014 statement of accounts was now ready for anyone or
institution that wanted to know the financial status of NDPHC.
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