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Commercial supply 2-weeks ahead of plan
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RfA primed for 94MW supply
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$3bn Ariaria Int’l market benefits
Ben Eguzozie
Barely a week after the historic commissioning of its $800 million power utility, Geometric Power’s subsidiary, Aba Power Limited (APL), continues to supply uninterrupted commercial electricity to the Aba Ring-fenced Area (RfA), which comprises nine of the 17 local government areas of Abia State.
The power supply is made from one of APL’s three turbines, which was achieved 13 days earlier than the two weeks initially scheduled, according to the company’s source.
Beginning from the weekend after commissioning, customers connected to the Geometric Power’s RfA began enjoying steady electricity supply, a significant departure in Nigeria’s 94-year troublous electricity industry, which had led to costly self-generation by Nigerians and their businesses at an annual rate of $12 billion to $14 billion.
Majorly included in the Aba RfA are the multi-billion-dollar Aba Ariaria International Market with an annual turnover of over $3 billion as of a 2018 data, and the Osisioma Industrial Layout.
Geometric Power founder and chairman, Bart Nnaji, a former Nigerian minister of power, was quoted to have directed the engineers of Aba Power Ltd to provide “power to the people without fail this [past] weekend” against the earlier scheduled supplies to commercial customers 13 days after commissioning in line with technical protocols.
Geometric Power’s expandable 188 megawatt thermal plant and the Aba Power company were commissioned on Monday 26 February in the Osisioma Industrial Layout in Aba by Nigeria’s Vice President Kassim Shettima on behalf of President Bola Tinubu.
According to three highly placed officials at the power utility who do not want their names in the media because they were not authorised to speak to the media on this matter, Nnaji ordered the APL engineers that “non-critical technical procedures must be eliminated.”
Nnaji, a globally recognized engineering professor, is pulling all the strings and using his network to give electric power to Aba, an industrial city perhaps known globally for its versatility in fabrication, manufacturing and making of wears and leather works worth over N144 billion. The city goes by the nicknames “China of Africa”, and “Japan of Africa”.
Business a.m. was told that officials of the electric power National Control Centre (NCC) at Osogbo in Osun State who were earlier billed to inspect the Geometric Power facility this week as one of the technical requirements, brought forward their scheduled arrival for last week, according to a credible source.
As one of Geometric Power’s three turbines built by General Electric, an American multinational conglomerate, went into commercial operations at the weekend, it began supplying 47MW, which is almost double the 25MW currently supplied to Aba metropolis and its environs by Niger Delta Power Holding Company (NDPHC) through the national grid.
Cliff Eneh, an energy consultant in Lagos who used to be a senior engineer with the National Electric Power Authority (NEPA) after working for the Texas Power and Light Company in the United States, described the Geometric Power’s first supply as significant.
He informed Business a.m. that the second turbine will increase power supply to the Aba RfA to 94MW, “thereby meeting Aba’s energy requirements for now, and stabilising power supply to the area.”
Eneh explained that Nigeria needs a number of generation and distribution firms with state-of-the-art facilities like Geometric Power, which is an integrated electricity group, having both generation and distribution subsidiaries.
