Nigeria May Soon Be In Total Darkness — Egbin CEO

The Managing Director and CEO, Egbin Power Plc, Mr. Dallas Peavey, Jr., in an  interview with punchng.com, says that Nigeria as a nation may be enveloped in darkness in the coming weeks due to a "Myriad of Challenges" in the power sector. 

Here is the interview in parts; 
(Q) What do you think about the Nigerian power sector almost three years after it was privatised? 
(A) I think at this point, we have gone through so many stages. I think the issue here is liquidity. So many of the owners came and they were thinking that they were going to be reaping some sort of returns after the first three years. In reality, nobody realised that they would go through three years and lose money. Our parent company owns Egbin as well as Ikeja Electric. Having said that, we cover a lot of the areas in Nigeria out of our own pocket. We, as a private company, don’t expect to do that.

I think the government is coming up with a plan and working with us to ensure that we get paid and continue to generate power, and go from the current generation of less than 4,000 megawatts to 10,000 MW in the next five years. At least, that is what we are hoping to achieve. We have got a long way to go, but I think we can get there.

(Q) Aside from the liquidity challenge, what other issues are hampering the growth of the sector?
(A) Fuel supply is also an issue. The second is transmission; the system is older than Egbin, which is 37 years old. The transmission system is older than that, and they have not done anything towards the revitalisation of the system. They are trying to push almost 5,000MW to the system and it is not capable of taking that. We have to work with the Transmission Company of Nigeria and the government, because it is still owned by the government, to work through those issues. Read More Here

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