Minister of state, power, works and housing, Suleiman Hassan Zarma, has stated that the federal government is ready to dole out N72 billion to electric distribution companies in the country to boost power supply and increase consumers confidence. The minister who disclosed this yesterday in Gombe during the commissioning of 1x30MVA 132/33KV power transformer at Gombe substation, urged electric distribution companies to improve their network so that the massive investment can lead to economic growth and development of the country.
“The laudable project being executed by TCN and power generation companies will not leads to significant improvement in the quality of power supply to the people unless the distribution companies also invest in rehabilitation and expansion of the network.” He said with the upgrading and commissioning of the new substation there will be remarkable improvement in power generation along the Jos Distribution Company network.
“With the upgrade, customers of Jos Disco are expected to experience remarkable improvement in power supply and some of the benefiting communities are: Gombe town, Dadin Kowa , Kumo, Billiri, Kaltungo, Waja, Bajoga, Mallam Sidi Dukku, Kashere in Gombe state and Darazo and Bara in Bauchi state,” he said.
Zarma said that the investment would strengthen grid infrastructure for enhanced wheeling capacity that offers redundancy, consistent with the requirements of N-1 reliability criterion.
He also disclosed that, federal government had resolved the lingering issues slowing the completion of the Dadin-kowa Hydroelectric power station in Gombe state, revealing that the ongoing construction work on the transmission line will soon be completed. Also speaking, the managing director of the Transmission Company of Nigeria, TCN, Usman Gur Mohammed represented by the Head of Transmission Service Provider, Victor Adewumi, said that the project will strengthen the grid stability in meeting with load demand that is being suppressed and also boost power supply with additional 30MVA (24MW) capacity.