NIGERIA – The African Development Bank has signed for the release of US$200m (about N61.2bn) to Nigeria for the expansion of the country’s power transmission infrastructure.
The Acting Vice President for Energy, Power, Climate and Green Growth, Wale Shonibare, disclosed this on the sidelines of his team’s visit to the Minister of State for Power, Goddy Jedy-Agba.
Shonibare said the AfDB approved the US$200m facility in March for phase one of the Nigeria Transmission Expansion project (NTEP) adding that “the investments will start flowing soon.”
He further revealed that the project was to be implemented in two phases with the second phase estimated to cost US$210m.
According to Shonibare, the REA programme that AfDB was also supporting, had already been signed and was currently under implementation.
The NTEP is one of the projects under TREP (The rural electrification program) financed by AfDB that is targeted at rehabilitating and expanding parts of the transmission grid in the North West, South South and the South East of Nigeria.
The project would reconstruct old transmission lines and build new ones as well as construct new substations, contributing to further increase in TCN’s transmission capacity.
TCN General Manager (Public Affairs), Ndidi Mbah, stated that the company had already concluded environmental studies including the resettlement action plan in which people that would be affected by the acquisition of the Right of Way (RoW) for the proposed transmission lines were identified and the report submitted to AfDB.
Shonibare said AfDB was seeking to invest in the country’s Discos and had commenced discussions with power distributors.
He further noted that the Bank was supporting Nigeria on the Jigawa Solar Project adding that the bank had already provided US$1m to support feasibility studies for phase one and will be looking at phase two, going forward.
