Nigeria and German based Siemens will today sign electricity road map agreement aimed at strengthening Nigeria’s power supply system.
The deal, according to BusinessDay Villa sources, is the product of a previous meetings between President Muhammadu Buhari and the German Chancellor, Angela Merkel held August of 2018, and is expected to add values to Nigeria’s poor power supply.
The Global Chief Executive Officer of Siemens, Joe Kaeser, is expected to meet with President Buhari at the Presidential Villa, today on Monday, to sign a Letter of Agreement on the Nigerian Electrification Roadmap which was submitted to President Buhari last year November.
BusinessDay gathered that several meetings had been held by power distribution companies, other stakeholders in the power sector and the Chief of Staff to the President, Abba Kyari. Such meetings focused on the key areas where the help of the German government is needed.
The partnership on the road map for power generation will aid the activities of the Transmission Company of Nigeria (TCN) and the eleven DisCos within the country, including software maintenance and support for four years, with a source claiming the project can be compared to that of Egypt megaproject.
“This project is similar to the Egypt megaproject and the Iraq electrification project recently awarded to Siemens,” the report quoted a source.
Siemens is coming with a pedigree having managed Egyptian mega power project , according to a statement on the company’s website,
“Siemens successfully managed to boost Egypt’s power generation capacity by over 40% by connecting 14.4 gigawatts to the Egyptian national grid. This is enough power to supply over 40 million Egyptians with reliable electricity and provide a much-needed power to different industrial sectors.”
“The leading supplier of systems for power generation has been in and out of Nigeria, holding several meetings and consultation, as well as electricity field observation dating back to October last year, a month after the meeting between President Buhari and the German Chancellor.
Why it matters: Nigeria has been struggling with power distribution, limited distribution networks, limited transmission line capacity, huge metering gap, and fall of gas supply, despite the privatisation of the power sector which produced six generation companies and eleven DisCos.
The roadmap by Siemens is expected to resolve these challenges. Part of the roadmap is a workshop facilitated by Siemens in October with the Federal Ministry of Power, Works and Housing, the Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission and the TCN.
