The Niger Delta Power Holding Company (NDPHC) says it is partnering with other stakeholders in the electricity industry to Light Up Agbara in Ogun state.

Sanya Adejokun, media adviser to the managing director of NDPHC said this in a statement in Abuja on Sunday.

Mr Adejokun said that the managing director, NDPHC, Chiedu Ugbo, led other stakeholders in the electricity industry to the groundbreaking of the ‘Light Up Agbara’ project.

He said that Mr Ugbo, who represented Vice President Kashim Shettima, said that NDPHC was the catalyst as far as provision of electricity was concerned in the country.

According to him, the federation has invested in NDPHC to the extent that the company has four thousand megawatts generation capacity built with people’s funds but it is grossly underutilised due to a number of factors outside its control.

Mr Ugbo said that in spite the huge investment in the power sector, Nigerians were still not getting the most benefit, saying NDPHC decided to take the lead by coming up with the idea of ‘Light Up Nigeria’ by rallying everybody in the industry together.

“For many years, we worried about what we could do to salvage the situation. I have been working with the Transmission Company of Nigeria (TCN), and then a few years ago, we started partnering with Eko Electricity Distribution Company (DisCo).

”We did a bilateral agreement, and then we signed the framework agreement, and I insisted that we must go to Agbara, being the industrial cluster in sub-Saharan Africa, to salvage the situation.

”We must provide electricity to industrial areas.“What the sector needs is the synergy by every stakeholder from gas through generation, through transmission, through distribution to end users,” he said.

According to the managing director, the issue is to seek out load centres like Agbara and this is a pilot phase for the ‘Light Up Nigeria’ initiative.

”We brought the vice president here, who himself is leading this charge on behalf of the president to ensure that we energise businesses to enable industrial growth,” he said.

Mr Ugbo said that Eko DisCo was brought into the Agbara scheme because it was the owner of the franchise area while NDPHC was a generation company.

“For our electricity to be dispatched, there must be demand and it is that demand that we are working on. That demand has to be facilitated by effective electricity transportation and that is why we brought in TCN.

”That is why we have federal government of Nigeria power company to unlock the bottlenecks in the transmission,” he said.

Mr Ugbo said that the federal government of Nigeria has taken the first step by bringing the mobile transformer to be installed in Agbara.

He said that NDPHC was also working with its distribution contractors, who would do the reticulation together with Millwater to the various customers.

Giving an update on the Light Up Nigeria project, NDPHC executive director, corporate services, Nkechi Mba, said that aside Agbara, the company was also working assiduously to light other parts of Nigeria.

Mr Mbah said that NDPHC had inaugurated the ‘Light Up’ South-East version, with MrShettima leading the charge.

“The North-East version of the project will be inaugurated in Bauchi in July,” she said

Mr Mba urged stakeholders in Agbara industrial cluster to bear the delay in completing the project on schedule, explaining that it was due to certain unforeseen circumstances arising from the novelty of the project.

She also commended FGN power company for generously providing the mobile transformer that was inaugurated.

”That we are at this stage today is because the chairman of our board, Vice President Kashim Shettima is bringing his influence to bear on this Initiative.

”Agbara will soon be replicated across Nigeria. After Bauchi and Kano, we plan to be in Port Harcourt,” she said.

Also speaking on the capacity of the company to make the Light Up Nigeria a reality, NDPHC executive director, generation, Kassim Abdulahi said that they have more than enough capacity to meet up with every obligation of the initiative.

“We have enough available power in all our power plants. We have almost 3,000 megawatts (MW) band ready to go but we are currently dispatching less than 1,000MW”, he said.

(NAN)