The Nigerian government says that in order to boost the country's electrical output to 40,000 megawatts the country needs $10 billion in annual investment over next decade.
In making the observation Nigerian Minister of Power Bath Nnaji noted that the federal government did not have such amounts of money unilaterally to invest in upgrading the nation's power generation capacity and emphasized the need for the government to partner with the private sector if such goals were to be achieved, Abuja's This Day newspaper reported.
Nnaji cautioned that even if Nigeria manages to achieve the goal of 40,000-megawatt power generation, it would still not be enough to solve the country's needs, citing South Africa as an example, saying that its population of about 47 million was still battling with inadequate power supply. Nnaji added, "So, we need to do more than 40,000 megawatts. As a result we are looking at ways to augment what we presently have. Currently we have two major sources, which are hydro and thermal. We are now adding the third source, which is coal.
We are building three coal fire power stations in Enugu, Gombe and Kogi. Nigeria's coal is the highest in terms of quality in the world. It is only coal from Australia that can compete with Nigeria. We are doing 1,000 megawatts in each station."
By. Charles Kennedy, Deputy Editor OilPrice.com
Charles is a writer for Oilprice.com More