Lagos State Government says it will partner with Niger Delta Power Holding Company to increase power supply in the state.
Gov. Babajide Sanwo-Olu said this on Friday when officials of Niger Delta Power Holding Company paid him a visit at Lagos House, Ikeja.
Sanwo-Olu said that the collaboration was necessary in view of the importance and strategic role the company could play at ensuring energy provision for Lagos State.
He said that there was the need for the state and Niger Delta Power Holding Company to design solutions that could take energy supply from the current position to a higher supply.
According to him, the current situation is not unacceptable and can be improved upon.
”So all of us just have a role to play. We need to scale up this relationship very quickly, and whatever is required of us to support in all of those deliverables, we will give it to you.
”So that at the end of the day, our people, the citizens that we are serving gets to see the real dividend of democracy.
”It is when we do this, that businesses can flourish, that markets can improve, that wealth can be created, that our GDP can improve and even the health, the quality of life will also improve,” he said.
The governor said that the state government had been intervening and had invested in electricity generation with six independent projects.
He assured Niger Delta Power Holding Company that bottlenecks hindering its operations in Lagos State would be tackled so as to ensure efficiency in power transmission.
Earlier, Mr Chiedu Ugbo, Managing Director of Niger Delta Power Holding Company, appealed to the state government to intervene on the issue of Right of Way (RoW).
”One project that is currently ongoing that we have a huge challenge and we want His Excellency to assist us is t Ihe Oke-Aro Alausa Transmission Line; it is a 132 kva line.
”We are very committed to finishing the project, but we have huge Right of Way issues. Not unexpected as Lagos is heavily built-up, but again, we have to provide infrastructure to serve the people. So this is one challenge we have,” Ugbo said.
He said that the company was set up in 2005 and had been designed to develop 10 projects, of which eight were currently working and two under construction.
”We have somewhere around 4,000 megawatts of capacity in the grid operating, unfortunately, not all the 4,000 can go to end users, because of systemic challenges,” Ugbo said.
