- FG Signs 6-year Deal With Siemens to Produce 25,000MW
The Federal Government has finally signed a 6-year power generating deal with a German company, Siemens, to increase Nigeria’s electricity production to 25,000 megawatts by 2025.
President Muhammadu Buhari led the signing proceedings with Siemens’s Global Chief Executive Officer, Mr Joe Kaeser, on Monday at the Presidential Villa.
President Buhari, during the signing, asked the German company to produce 7,000MW by 2021, the first phase of the deal and by 2023 11,000MW reliable power supply should have been achieved.
The whole project is expected to be completed by 2025 with a total production of 25,000MW.
“We all know how critical electricity is to the development of any community or indeed any nation. And in Nigeria, while we are blessed to have significant natural gas, hydro and solar resources for power generation, we are still on the journey to achieving reliable, affordable and quality electricity supply necessary for economic growth, industrialisation and poverty alleviation,” Buhari said.
“There have been many attempts at solving the electricity problem in our country. Previous governments have explored state-funded solutions through the ill-prepared National Independent Power Projects. They also explored the installation of large emergency power projects. There was also the partial privatisation of the power generation and distribution sectors.
“These various interventions to solving the electricity problem have yielded an imbalance between the amount of power generated and the amount available for consumers. Despite over 13,000MW of power generation capacity, only an average of 4,000MW reliably reaches consumers. Now, we have an excellent opportunity to address this challenge.”