Aba Power to Commence Electricity Supply a Week Ahead of Schedule

Dike Onwuamaeze

The Chairman of Aba Power Limited, Prof. Barth Nnaji, has directed the Aba Power Limited to start commercial operations this weekend, which is a week ahead of its operational schedule.

The company had scheduled to commence supply of power to its commercial customers 13 days after its power plant was inaugurated on Monday, February 26, in line with technical protocols, but, Nnaji who is a former Minister of Power, has directed the utility’s engineers to provide “power to the people without fail this weekend.”

He further directed that, “non-critical technical procedures must be eliminated.”

Meanwhile, the Minister of Power, Mr. Adebayo Adelabu, disclosed at the commissioning of the power facilities on Monday that the federal government would be studying the performance of the Geometric Power group, the parent company of Aba Power, closely with a view to making it a business model for the development of the beleaguered Nigerian power sector.

The Geometric Power 188 Megawatt thermal plant and the Aba Power company that would distribute electricity to nine of the 17 local government areas in Abia State, were commissioned last Monday by Vice President Kassim Shettima on behalf of President Bola Tinubu in the Osisioma Industrial Layout in Aba, Abia, State, 24 hours after the first turbine was turned on.

In furtherance of the bid to commence power supply one week earlier than scheduled, the officials of the National Control Centre (NCC) at Oshogbo in Osun State who were billed to inspect the Geometric Power facility next week as one of the technical requirements, would now arrive this week, according to sources who disclosed that “Nnaji, a globally recognised engineering professor, is pulling all the strings and using his network.”

A Lagos-based power consultant, Mr. Cliff Eneh, who used to be a senior engineer with the National Electricity Power Authority, said when one of Geometric Power’s three turbines built by General Electric of the United States goes into commercial operations this weekend, it will supply 47MW, which is almost double the 25MW the Aba Metropolis and the environs currently receive from the Niger Delta Power Holding Company (NDPHC).

The second turbine, according to Eneh, “will increase power supply to the Aba Ring-fenced Area to 94MW, thereby meeting Aba energy requirements for now and stabilising power supply to the area.

“Nigeria needs a number of generation and distribution firms with state-of-the-art facilities like Geometric Power, which is an integrated electricity group because it has both generating and distributing subsidiaries.”