Kyari in Germany, Holds Talks with Siemens on Improved Power

Emmanuel Addeh in Abuja

The Chief of Staff to President Muhammadu Buhari, Mallam Abba Kyari, and the Minister of Power, Mr. Saleh Mamman, met yesterday with Siemens officials in Germany in furtherance of the deal recently signed by the president and the energy company on improving electricity supply in the country.

It was learnt that the duo, joined by the Nigerian Ambassador to Germany, Mr. Yusuf Tuggar, are in Europe to fine-tune the details of the agreement, the process of which started two years ago when Buhari met with German Chancellor, Angela Merkel on August 31, 2018.

THISDAY gathered that the Siemens team was led to the meeting by the Global Chief Executive Officer of the company, Mr. Joe Kaeser.
Confirming the meeting through his Twitter handle yesterday, which was verified by an official of the ministry, who said Mamman left the country on Sunday, the minister explained that he was in Germany to find ways of proffering solutions to the current power problems in Nigeria.

“The Chief of Staff to the President, Mallam Abba Kyari and I are in Munich right now meeting with executive members of @Siemens to discuss issues relating to the Nigerian power sector. The Nigerian Ambassador to Germany H.E @YusufTuggar has joined us for this meeting.

“It will be recalled that the Nigerian government @NigeriaGov recently signed a six-year deal with the German company, which will result in the effective generation, transmission and distribution of at least 25,000 megawatts of electricity by the year 2025,” Mamman said.

Buhari had tasked Siemens and other stakeholders in the power sector to work hard to achieve 7,000 megawatts of reliable power supply by 2021 and 11,000 megawatts by 2023 during the agreement signing ceremony.

“My challenge to Siemens, our partner investors in the distribution companies, the Transmission Company of Nigeria and the electricity regulator is to work hard to achieve 7,000 megawatts of reliable power supply by 2021 and 11,000 megawatts by 2023 in phases 1 and 2 respectively.

“After these transmission and distribution system bottlenecks have been fixed, we will seek in the third and final phase to drive generation capacity and overall grid capacity to 25,000 megawatts,’’ he had said.

The president also said the agreement would be a strictly government-to-government arrangement to avoid the problem of going through middlemen.