The much expected improvement in electricity for citizens of Niger State may be far from reality as the fourth hydro power generating dam, Zungeru dam, expected to serve the immediate electricity needs of the state can only be operational in 2019.
With the Shiroro dam, Jebba dam and Kainji dam – the three major electricity generating dams – and the fourth in Zungeru, Niger State residents had hoped that the era of epileptic power supply would soon end but that was not to be.
This is because the chances of the latest of the hydro power dams in the state to be inaugurated in Zungeru is very slim as it will take almost two years before electricity can be generated from therein.
While many businesses had been grounded and millions of Naira lost to blackout in most parts of the state, residents of Minna, the state capital, are counting their loss due to months of power outage, especially areas under Bosso Business unit to which the region’s management had no response to.
But the Minister of Works, Power and Housing, Mr. Babatunde Fashola, at the inauguration of the first unit of the 700-megawatt (MW) Zungeru Hydroelectric Power Plant, Niger State said that the facility could only commence energy generation by 2019.
The Minister told guests during the River Closure on the plant’s main river bed at the project site in Zungeru that the last unit of the effort would become operational in the first quarter of 2020 following the completion of the entire project.
Represented by the Director, Energy Resources of the Ministry and Project Manager of the Employer, Olatunji Ajayi, the minister explained that work on the project had reached 40 percent completion with the river closure.