- Governor Alex Otti inaugurates Abia State’s 181-megawatt geometric power plant, aiming to minimize power outages in the state
- The project, initiated in 2004, involves an $800 million investment and includes the construction of a 27km natural gas pipeline
Governor Alex Otti of Abia State has stated that the recent inauguration of the state’s 181-megawatt geometric power plant will make power outages the exception rather than the rule.
On Monday, Vice President Kashim Shettima inaugurated the geometric power plant in Aba, the state’s industrial hub.
The power plant, described as Nigeria’s ‘first integrated electricity facility,’ is located in Aba’s Osisioma industrial hub.
“This is a project that was started in 2004, during the administration of Governor Orji Uzor Kalu,” Otti said during a chat on Channels Television’s Politics Today.
He added that the $800 million project, including the building of 27km natural gas pipeline championed by Geometrics Power Limited, can generate and distribute 181 megawatts of power.
Giving a background to the delay in the project, Otti, a former bank chief, said sometime in 2010, the founder of Geometrics Power Limited and ex-Minister for Science and Technology, Bart Nnaji, approached him when he (Governor Otti) was the Executive Director of First Bank for funding.
He said, “We processed an $85m facility for him (Nnaji), but unfortunately, he couldn’t draw down on that facility because the board of the bank felt that because I was proceeding to Diamond Bank as CEO, it wouldn’t make any sense to allow the country to withdraw the facility when the person that was going to manage it was not there.
“I headed to Diamond Bank which was the bank that was initially funding the project. On getting to Diamond Bank, we restructured the facility and saw it to completion by October 2014, the time I left Diamond Bank.
“But a lot of things happened thereafter that made it impossible for the project to take off. There was the unfortunate sale and resale of the Aba Invest Island and that took a life of its own.
“When that was resolved, Shell which owned the major oil block that was supposed to supply gas to Geometric has sold it to another company whose focus was not gas for domestic use but export.
“By the time we took over on the 29th of May, we sat down with Geometric a few times and engaged with NNPC and NNPC deployed their partners and gas was made available.”
The governor said the plant currently supplies 141 megawatts power, which will be expanded to 181 megawatts when the final turbine is delivered, adding that power outages will soon be rare in the state.
“The third turbine of the plant has been fired and all the three turbines are operational. Power outage will be the exception rather than the rule which is the situation at this time,” he said.
Residents have started feeling the impact of the project, celebrating 48-hour of uninterrupted power supply on Thursday.
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