Federal government to invest $3 billion in power sector in two years

Special adviser on Infrastructure to Muhammed Buhari- the President of Nigeria, disclosed in a virtual meeting organized by the Abuja chamber of Commerce and industry(ACCI), that the Federal government had intentions to invest $3 billion to the power sector in the next 24 months.

Currently, Nigeria is using 4,900 megawatts. This development would raise it to 7000 megawatts and above.

Ahmad Zakari- the special adviser, explained the means of funding through which this would happen. He mentioned that the government had earlier secured a $500 million loan from the World Bank, and that the government was expecting another facility from the African development Bank. According to him, all these show the amount of faith these organizations had in the reform strategies of Muhammed Buhari.

According to The Guardian, Zakari noted that with renewed financial discipline in the sector following the recent intervention by the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), electricity tariffs are expected to hit N100 billion in the short to medium-term.

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He stated that “People say if you eliminate subsidies you are going to have poor people or the vulnerable people pay more. But we argue that the only reason the power price in Nigeria is high is that we do not generate enough. If you generate 10 gigawatts of power, the tariff will be half of what it is now. Keeping the prices officially low is not the approach; increasing delivery power is the approach that will effectively get the same output, which is, making the citizen pay lower”

He ended the meeting by saying that the Buhari Administration had a motive of translating from the traditional way of funding subsidies.

Article source: The Guardian Nigeria

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