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The
Vice President, Namadi Sambo, has held a meeting with contractors and
other parties involved in the National Integrated Power Projects (NIPP)
to ensure they actualise the targets set for the completion of the
various power plants and projects under the scheme.

This is the first
NIPP meeting Mr. Sambo has chaired as Vice president. In the past, he
has attended the meeting as a member of the committee set up to monitor
power projects.

The meeting
apparently followed a summons from the vice president to members of the
committee and the purpose was to ensure that they understood clearly
that the administration would not relent in its determination to solve
Nigeria’s power challenges.

According to the
minister of state for power, Nuhu Wya, Mr. Sambo was able to get the
contractors involved to commit themselves to working in accordance with
the government’s schedule and targets so that Nigerians can enjoy the
improved electricity supply promised by the administration.

While briefing
journalists after the closed door discussion, Mr. Wya, declined to give
the exact current of electricity generation level in the country at
present, saying “we are managing the challenges in a better manner, so
we are bound to have better results now. It is an ongoing process”.

Review of scheme

Ekiti State
governor, Segun Oni, who was also at the meeting, told journalists that
the entire NIPP scheme including gas supply, security of installations
and contractors as well as compensation for affected communities, was
reviewed and the committee was satisfied that everything was going on
schedule.

“Today, we looked
at the overall status of the NIPP projects. We looked at gas supply, we
looked at compensation, we looked at the issue of security and on the
whole we are satisfied that the projects are going on properly and
where we have challenges we will put up programmes to overcome them and
on the whole we are satisfied that NIPP will deliver on schedule. That
is the summary,” Mr. Oni said

The governor, who
also confirmed the administration’s plan to decentralise electricity
generation, said this is so that each plant will deliver electricity to
its immediate locality to avoid waste and extra cost of linking to a
national distribution system.

The
decentralisation policy will also help to reduce the incidences of
larger blackouts in some parts of the country whenever a single power
plant suffers a breaks down.

“This is called
distributed generation; it helps you to generate where you are
consuming. It will reduce loses that you would have otherwise have had
if you were trunking over very long distances, you have better control,
if you are down, you are down only a little within the geography and it
is going to add on to the flexibility that Nigeria will have handling
the power situation,” he added.