Oscarline Onwuemenyi 31 May 2017, Sweetcrude, Abuja – Vital equipment meant for the completion of the 245 Megawatts, MW, Kaduna Power Plant have been rotting away in Onne Port, Rivers State, since early 2015, stalling the completion and take off of the power station.
Officials of the Ministry of Power disclosed this to Senate Committee on Power, Steel Development and Metallurgy, led by Senator Enyinnaya Abaribe.
The Committee was also informed that the contract for the Kaduna Power Plant located at Kudenda, Kaduna State, was awarded to EPC Consortium on November 19, 2009, with completion set for the fourth quarter of 2017, which had now been shifted to the second quarter of 2018.
Director of Distribution in the Ministry of Power, Mrs. Priscilla Sapke, said there were repeated appeals to the Nigerian Ports Authority, NPA, Onne, Rivers State, to release the equipment, but lamented that the plea fell on deaf ears.
According to her, NPA seized 19 containers with accessories critical to the installation of Kaduna Power Plant.
Sapke, who noted that several containers were initially seized by the NPA between 2012 and 2014, however, maintained that a number of the containers were released to General Electric and Rockson Engineering, the contractors handling the plant, following the payment of 50 percent of an agreed demurrage.
The director, who did not give details of the exact amount paid by the companies, said: “The directive is that they (the NPA) should release government’s goods and talk later about commercial issues but they refused.”
Following the refusal, the project meant to last 24 months now has no definite date of completion, just as the Dual Fired LPFO/Gas215 MW Kaduna Power Plant, initiated in 2009 and initially meant to be completed in 2011, has also had its completion date shifted.
The Abaribe-led Senate Committee on Power, Steel Development and Metallurgy was on tour of power installations in Kaduna as part of the committee’s oversight function. The Committee expressed disappointed with the uncertainty that now surrounded the completion of power plant.
