FG, Siemens deal excites electricity consumer group

Mr Adeola Samuel-Ilori, the National Co-ordinator of the forum, spoke to the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) on Monday in Lagos while reviewing performance of President Muhammadu Buhari in the power sector.

NAN recalls that the Presidency recently approved the release of fund for the first part of Phase 1 of the Presidential Power Initiative to start the pre-engineering and concession financing workstreams.

Adeola said the success of the Siemen’s deal was pivotal to Nigeria’s power sector road map aimed at improving electricity generation, transmission and distribution across the country.

He said: “The contract as signed will enhance the distribution networks and also increase generation capacity to 40,000MW.

“Another beautiful thing about the contractual agreement is the elimination of middlemen and subcontractors which characterised past government efforts and led to humongous fraud.

“The deal with Siemens is government to government tripartite agreement.

“With its vast implementation within the next two years, we should witness improvement in the sector and that will be enviable and may end Nigeria’s energy woes.”

He said that the Buhari-led administration would largely be remembered for the success or failure in the sector, and noted that its predecessors spent enormous resources on the power sector with little or no results.

“All successive governments have inherited the burden of power sector in this nation; it’s like a sore thumb in their fingers.

“Some came with genuine intention to make it better but ended up messing it up while some choose to better it but ended up bettering their pockets.

“We have had some humongous amounts expended in the past which resulted in little or no result that are beneficial to the masses,” Samuel-Ilori said.

He added that there was need for an urgent review of power privatisation process because it had failed to realise its objectives of improving electricity supply to Nigerians. (NAN)