…Calls for urgent infrastructural development
Mkpoikana Udoma
13 November 2017, Sweetcrude, Port Harcourt — The National Power Training Institute of Nigeria, NAPTIN, has decried the non patronage of its training centres across the country by electricity distribution companies and electricity generation companies in the country.
The Acting Director General of NAPTIN, Mr. Ahmed Nagode, made this known while speaking at an event in the institute’s Regional Training Centre in Afam, Oyigbo Local Government Area of Rivers State.
Nagode also lamented that the institute which was saddled with the responsibility of building human capacity in the power sector, lacks infrastructure for training at technical level, especially the training centre in Afam.
In the same vein, the Assistant Director of Afam RTC, Engr. Yaronin Ademe, said the Afam RTC which was capable of transforming the power in southern part of the country, was saddled with several challenges ranging from power supply to inadequate infrastructure.
Ademe also disclosed that Afam RTC urgently grants and aides as well as infrastructural development, such as laboratories, demonstration substations and demonstration centres for renewable energy and gas turbines, amongst others.
He also commended the efforts of all the people who have contributed to the success of Afam training centre, since it inception in 1985.
“Afam RTC have the capacity to turn around the power sector in the South South geopolitical zone and Nigeria as a whole, if adequately empowered with the current level of infrastructural development at NAPTIN.
“We want NAPTIN to empower Afam RTC in the provision for small module gas turbine demonstration centre, modern automation laboratory demonstration centre, renewable energy laboratory and training centre, transmission and distribution demonstration substations, electrical engineering laboratory and demonstration centre, etc..
“Considering the importance of advance latest technological training, and it’s relevance to the actualization of dream of a 24hrs electricity supply for the nation; the provision of these vital training facilities will enable Afam RTC to produce the future engineers in the power sector,” Ademe said in his speech.
Responding, the Head, Engineering, Performance and Monitoring of the Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commision, Engr. Abdu-Bello Mohammed, opined that NAPTIN should be brought under NERC, in a bid to make it mandatory for licensees to patronise the institute.
“I think it is important to bring NAPTIN, being the only training institute in the sector, under the purview of the Commission.
“It will make a lot of sense if there is a linkage between NAPTIN and NERC, so that licensees could be mandated in a way to patronise NAPTIN, and NAPTIN will also benefit from the electricity market and also develop the sector,” Mohammed said.
