Mambilla Hydro Power Project Ready For Inauguration December – Minister

Minister

Minister of Power, Mr Abubakar Aliyu, on Thursday, said that the Mambilla hydro power project, located in Taraba with a 40-megawatt capacity, would be ready for inauguration in December.

The minister stated this when he appeared before the House of Representatives Committee on Power to defend the 2022 budget proposal of his ministry.

He stated that the first phase of the hydro power project would take effect in December, while the groundbreaking ceremony of the second phase would also be held immediately.

The minister said that some of the villages around the power project, which had yet to be connected with the grid due to displacement during the construction, would be connected before December.

Aliyu, while admitted that there were little hitches on the project, said that discussions had been activated to see how they would be resolved.

“The agreement has been signed since 2017 with a Chinese. We will see how we can resolve the legal issue. We are very worried about it but I believe we will surmount it,” he said.

The minister described the Zungeru power plant project as a 700-megawatt facility, stressing that “if everything goes well, we are still sticking to the December deadline.”

He, however, said that the deadline might be extended to 2022 because of the security challenges causing lots of delay, stressing that the project was more than 90 per cent completed.

On the Katsina wind farm power project, the minister said that December deadline had been given to the contractor for the completion of the 10-megawatt project.

Aliyu disclosed that the project was being vandalised by hoodloms and that about six out of the 27 turbines had been affected.

Speaking on the power outage that currently being experienced in Borno, the minister expressed worry about the situation, adding that the damage had been rectified.

Aliyu said that it was unfortunate that three more towers were pulled down again “at a time when the ministry was about to restore power to the state.

“We are working with the state government to restore power to the state. We are engaging our agencies to ensure power is restored to Maiduguri,” he said.

The minister put the total budget proposal for 2022 as N301.257 billion for the ministry and parastatals under it.

He said N75.461billion was the total budget for the ministry, out of which N49.628 billion would go for bilateral agreement, while the ministry would get N25 billion.

Chairman of the committee, Rep. Magaji Aliyu, promised to cooperate with the ministry to ensure that the goal of achieving uninterrupted power supply was achieved.

He noted that some important responsibilities were being handled outside the ministry, adding that nobody would be allowed to spend the country’s money without proper appropriation.