By Kingsley Adegboye, LAGOS
Stable power supply has been identified as a key factor in attracting foreign investors into the country.
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This was disclosed by the Chief Executive Officer of Ikeja Electric, Engr. (Mrs) Folake Soetan, at the 32nd Board of Fellows Conference of the Nigerian Society of Chemical Engineers in Lagos.
According to her, “A stable power supply was a key factor that foreign investors consider before committing to invest in any country.”
The conference’s theme was “Power Sector: The Nexus Between Industrialization and Economic Development.”
Mrs Soetan enumerated the benefits of a stable power supply.
She said: “It fosters innovative and technological advancement and also contributes to the diversification of the economy beyond oil and gas.”
She lamented that Nigeria, which had the potential of generating 12.522 megawatts of electric power from existing plants was only able to transmit 4000 megawatts.
“(It) is insufficient for a country with over 200 million population. Only 60 percent of Nigerians have access to reliable electricity.”
She noted that Nigeria could not transmit 8100 megawatts because of a lack of downstream capacity due to insufficient gas supply.
Mrs. Soetan regretted that many government agencies’s indebtedness to DisCos and GenCos had negatively affected the profitability of the sector.
Speaking to journalists at the occasion, the National President of the Nigerian Society of Chemical Engineers, Engr. Anthony Ogbuigwe said the theme of the conference was chosen in the light of foreign investors moving out of Nigeria in droves because of the unreliability of the power sector.
His words: “We have seen a lot of industries closing down and leaving our nation. We decided to address the issue bedeviling the power sector and make our findings known to the Federal Government in our communique.”
Ogbuigwe noted that successive governments had spent huge sums of money on the power sector without tangible results because of a lack of continuity and coordination.
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