Geometric’s $800m integrated power plant to hit stream with presidential inauguration on Feb 26

Ben Eguzozie

Geometric Power, the 181-megawatt independent power plant in the Osisioma Industrial Layout of Aba in Abia State will be commissioned on February 26, by President Bola Tinubu, according to a statement issued by the company’s management. This is a shift from the earlier inauguration date of February 24.

The president will commission the 188-MW thermal plant alongside Aba Power Ltd which will take electricity from the new plant and supply to nine of the 17 local government areas in Abia State.

Geometric Power’s coming on stream has more than a decade hiatus, since it was dreamt of by its founder and investor, Bart Nnaji, Nigeria’s former power minister and development engineer.

Cliff Eneh, an energy consultant in Lagos, who was a senior manager with the defunct National Electric Power Authority of Nigeria (NEPA), after serving as a senior engineer with the Texas Power and Light Corporation in the United States, said Geometric Power was proud of the support the Federal Government given to the integrated power company, being the only group in Nigeria to generate and distribute its own power.

“Other power firms either generate or distribute but do not get involved in both,” he said.

Described as the biggest investment in the South-East Nigeria, Geometric Power has spent some $800 million on its integrated power project, which includes building a 27-kilometre gas supply pipeline from Owaza in Ukwa West LGA in Abia State, to the Osisioma Industrial Layout in Aba.

“We have, in addition, installed 150,000 km of cables and wires, and installed four new power substations, as well as refurbished three others inherited from the defunct Power Holding Company of Nigeria (PHCN”, explained Ben Caven, a former NEPA executive director, famous for leading transmission, generation and engineering divisions simultaneously in the former state-owned power utility.

Caven is now the Managing Director of Geometric Power Ltd.

Patrick Umeh, a former executive with the Los Angeles Water and Light Company in the U.S who later served as commissioner in-charge of markets, market rates and competition at the Nigeria Electricity Regulatory Commission (NERC), described the tubular poles mounted by Geometric Power in Aba and the environs as “incomparable in Africa”.

“Only in cities like Tokyo and San Francisco in California do you have facilities of this quality and size. Though quite tall, the tubular poles here are actually about 10 meters deep. In the unlikely event of a natural disaster like earthquake in Aba or the environs, Aba Power and the Geometric Group will still be able to supply electricity to its numerous customers,” Umeh narrated.

The Geometric Power Group was founded by Bart Nnaji, a globally respected academic and robotics engineer in the U.S, who was Nigeria’s minister of science and technology and later minister of power.

Nnaji embarked on the integrated project after the then World Bank president James Wolfensohn and the then Nigeria’s finance minister Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala visited Aba on March 17, 2004, and discovered that the greatest challenge facing both large-scale and medium-scale industrialists in Aba, reputed to be the centre of indigenous manufacturing in Nigeria, was epileptic power supply.

Both Wolfensohn and Okonjo-Iweala appealed to Nnaji to assist with a power plant dedicated to Aba, following the 22 MW Abuja Emergency Power Plant he led a team of Nigerian engineers to build in Abuja from 2000 to 2001 that supplied uninterrupted power to critical places like the Nigerian National Petroleum Company (NNPC) Ltd, the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) headquarters, the Aso Rock Villa and the entire Abuja central business district.

“Electricity was rarely available in Aba,” notes Alphonsus Udeigbo, president-general of the 22,000-member Aba Landlords Protection and Development Association (ALPANDA). “Even when electricity was available, it was so poor that it couldn’t power household appliances, let alone industrial machines”.

According to Alexander Maduakor, president of Association of Aba Industrialists, the inauguration of Geometric Power utility “will mark a new dawn in the country, not just in Aba or Abia State”.