BUA Group, Honeywell and Dangote Group in conjunction with similar manufacturing plants across Nigeria are generating more than 15,000 megawatts of electricity used by the companies off the national grid, Dr. Lazarus Angbazo, President and CEO of General Electric (GE) Nigeria disclosed at the weekend.
According to him, the captive power of 15,000mw is sufficient for the private companies to operate.
“When I say they are captive, I am talking about consumer industrial groups that are self-generating, like the Dangote Cement, Bua Cement, Lafarge Cement and others,” explained Angbazo.
He said due to inefficient power supply, these groups are constructing private power plants to ensure their operations are not affected by epileptic supply of electricity in the country.
“We are in partnership with Dangote, for example, on Obajana, Ibese, Shagamu and Gboko and we are the one providing the power,” local news platform, local daily ThisDay quoted him as saying.
Honeywell also gets power from GE, as well as other companies producing food and making use of GE engines.
Angbazo said further that the groups have been able to continuously produce the quantity of electricity required for their operations due to their financial muscle, citing Dangote, which is Africa’s largest producer of cement as an example.
According to him, the companies are taking the same step in the generation of captive power to ensure smooth operations.
The CEO said GE would during next month’s World Economic Forum (WEF) holding in Nigeria talk about how the partnership it has with respect to additional power generating capacity would be increased.
He added that the 11 distribution companies (DISCOs) can generate power within their own networks, without going through the Transmission Company of Nigeria (TCN), if they are financially buoyant enough. This, he said would be good as the DISCOs lose up to 40 percent of power allocated to them from the generating companies on transmission.
The GE Nigeria chief said he expects some DISCOs to have generating capacity in the next few years, especially the big ones like Ibadan, Ikeja, Enugu and Eko. This he noted will improve electricity supply in Nigeria.
Africa’s largest economy with over 170 million people still produces less than 4,000 MW of electricity, a dismal figure when compared with South Africa’s estimated population of 52.9 million and 44, 000MW power generation level.
However, reforms in Nigeria’s critical power sector, is expected to bring the much desire succour to its citizens and boost economic activities. Early this year, renowed economist, Jim O’Niell was quoted as saying the country’s economy “could grow at 10-12 percent by sorting out this problem alone.”
