Nigeria’s power infrastructure project by Siemens Energy AG is now slated for completion by 2025, five years beyond its initial deadline of 2020. Officials stated that this setback is primarily due to severe logistics disruption cause by the COVID-19 pandemic. Which severely hampered the procurement and transportation of essential raw materials crucial for the project’s advancement.
Siemens, a German-based company had in 2019 agreed to help raise Nigeria’s electricity output to 7,000 megawatts in the first phase targeting a total generation and output capacity of 25,000 MW come 2025.
Bloomberg quoted Oladayo Orolu, head of business development and government relations at the firm, as saying “When we conceptualized this project in 2018, our plan was within two years we should be done with phase one, but then Covid happened.”
The initial target was that Siemens would scale the country’s grid operational capacity from the present below 5,000 MW to 7,000 MW by 2021, expand it to 11,000 MW by 2023 and deliver 25,000 mw by 2025.
Premiums Times reported that the project will now be due by 2025.
However, the Pandemic was not the only factor confronting this venture. Cable theft and a problematic transition of the defunct state-power asset National Electric Power Authority (NEPA) into private ownership are other key issues, according to the medium.
Experts from the Nigerian Association for Energy Economics have raised concerns that Nigeria’s 4,000 mw daily generation is barely adequate to serve Lagos State. This means nearly 193.4 million (90.6%) Nigerians would lack access to electricity where Nigeria’s daily output is to be allocated to Lagos alone.
While the shifting the deadline for delivering the Siemens project dashed the hope of businesses in the Nigerian informal sector looking to the project for stable power to expand their productivity as earlier anticipated.
