THE Federal Government and the French Development Agency (AFD) yesterday signed a grant agreement of €25 million to improve power supply in Nigeria’s North-West region.

The project is focusing on building 800 kilometres of 330KVA transmission lines and 13 sub-stations.

The grant electricity scheme is jointly funded by the European Union (EU) and the AFD, with the Transmission Company of Nigeria (TCN) as the implementation partner.

The Managing Director of TCN, Sule Abdulaziz, said at the signing ceremony in Abuja that the project was not just critical to the northern corridor of the country, but would also improve the country’s power transmission in general.

“This will surely give a boost to power transmission in general because it is very critical to not just the Northern corridor but to the entire system,” Abdulaziz stated.

“This project was designed to help the TCN operationalize its ‘Transmission Expansion Plan’ through the construction of additional transmission lines and sub-stations across nine states in the northern part of the country – Niger, Kebbi, Sokoto, Kaduna, Kano, Jigawa, Bauchi and Nassarawa,” the Minister of State for Budget and National Planning, Clems Agba, also said at the ceremony.

Agba and the AFD Country Director in Nigeria, Xavier Muron, signed the agreement in the presence of the Ambassador of France to Nigeria, Emmanuelle Blatmann, and the Head of Cooperation at the European Union Delegation to Nigeria and ECOWAS, Cecile Tassin-Pelzer.

The project, The ICIR reports, is meant to strengthen the low-carbon economic growth in West Africa by improving the quality of the electricity network in Nigeria and supporting the development of a regional electricity market under the West African Power Pool.

The agreement represented the EU’s contribution to the project, as the AFD contribution of €202 million had been signed in December 2020. The total cost of the project is about €238 million, including €12 million from the TCN.