LABOUR Party (LP) presidential candidate, Peter Obi, has promised to increase the country’s power generation capacity to 25,000 megawatts (mw) by 2025 if elected President in 2023.
Obi made the promise in his 72-page manifesto titled, ‘It’s POssible: Our Pact with Nigerians’.
He said his administration would reform and restructure the Nigeria Electricity Supply Industry (NESI) to deliver adequate, accessible, reliable and affordable power to Nigerians while also delivering the needed energy to move Nigeria to a competitive and productive economy.
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The former Anambra State governor said he would take decisive decisions to end Nigeria’s chronic power shortages through adequate and tailored investments in various sources of electricity and transmission lines.
According to him, he would complete the ongoing “$2.3b Nigeria-Siemens network improvement deal to achieve 7,000mw stable capacity by 2023, 11,000 megawatts by 2024, and 25,000 megawatts by 2025”.
Obi also promised to retain top local and international financial advisers to restructure the Transmission Company of Nigeria (TCN), and contract an experienced grid operator to manage it to deliver, through callable financial guarantees, a resolution to the existing transmission challenges, persistent grid stability and an expanded capacity for Nigeria’s future power transmission needs.
The LP flagbearer added that he would urgently re-engage the 14 Independent Power Producers (IPPs), who had, in 2016, initialled Power Purchase Agreements (PPAs) worth $2.5 billion to build a total of 1,125 megawatts of installed solar capacity for delivery to the national grid.
He stated that he would remove the main structural impediments to reaching financial closure and negotiate a win-win PPA with an excellent list of local and international investors who have already demonstrated their capacity to fund these projects.
“We will invite experienced local and international developers to sign new PPAs for 8,000mw of solar and wind plants, including offshore wind farms in the Lagos, Warri and Port-Harcourt coastal areas with a mandatory latest commercial operation date of December 2025,” he said.
“We will restructure the Niger Delta Power Holding Company (NDPHC) to release its 4000mw of generating capacity by bringing on stream Gbarain, which had a fire incident, Ihovbor, with a turbine failure, Olorunsogo, Alaoji, Calabar and Sapele IPPs, as well as ensuring that Sapele, Omoku, Alaoji, Omotosho II, Olorunsogo II, and Geregu II, all return to optimal status, to generate up to their nameplate capacity.”
To finance the power sector, Obi said he would as a matter of principle, implement financing of power projects through different financing mechanisms including project and export finance, trade finance advisory and insurance, development and multilateral institutions’ long-term debt facilities and export credit insurance.
He added that the private sector participants will be incentivised to provide equity, expertise, governance, warranties, bonds and other suitable financial and performance guarantees as a condition for participating in the electricity sector.
Obi stated that the manifesto laid out his “mission focus and mandate for securing, uniting and making Nigeria productive”.
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