Vice President Mohammed Namadi Sambo has given Power Distribution contractors sixty days within which they should complete their contracts on power projects, threatening that after the 60-day deadline, the contracts would be terminated.
Namadi Sambo who spoke today at a meeting with the Transmission and Distribution companies at the Presidential Villa, Abuja, asked the Managing Director of the Niger Delta Power Holding Company, Mr. James Olotu, to convey the message to the contractors on the need for them to fast tract the work to avoid embarrassment.
He assured those of them that are serious about completing the work on schedule that government is ready to assist them to acquire transformers to enable them to distribute power adequately, adding that the companies would buy the transformers from the Ministry of Power, while payment will be spread over a period of fifteen years.
Namadi Sambo directed the Transmission, Distribution and Niger Delta Power Companies to meet and solve the problems facing their operations, especially that of load shedding in parts of the country.
The Vice President asked the stakeholders at the meeting to submit within one week, their plans towards the delivery of energy metering, adding: “the meeting is to review the situation of power supply situation in the country and essentially, to work out strategies through which government investments through the NDPHC in terms of various assets at the distribution level could be completed and transferred to the discos at a price to be determined later.”
He advised the Transmission and Distribution companies to be transparent in their operations and work together to achieve the desired result for Nigerians.
Earlier, the Managing Director, Niger Delta Power Company, Mr. James Olotu briefed the meeting on the progress of the NIPP, highlighting some challenges which included unavailability of 33 KV bays at the 132/33kV substations, inadequate transmission capacity at the TCN substation in Abuja, Ikeja and Port Harcourt Discos; Security challenges in the North East; the issue of connection of weak existing 33 KV source to new completed injection substations at Kaduna and Ibadan.
