‘$530m Geometric power project, the single largest investment in South East’

The $530 million Geometric Power plant in Aba, Abia State, is the single largest investment in the South-East region, says Bart Nnaji, chairman, Geometric Power Limited, promoter of the independent power facility.

Nnaji, while addressing the Aba business community at the investiture of Emma Nwakpadolu, new president, Aba Chamber of Commerce, Industry, Mines and Agriculture (ACCIMA), said it would not take the company more than four months to provide Aba with constant electricity, immediately its impasse with the Enugu Electricity Distribution Company (EEDC) was resolved.

The company has completed a power plant with a capacity to produce about 141 megawatts of electricity in its first phase, built new distribution lines, four new substations and rehabilitated another three, previously used by the former Power Holding Company of Nigeria plc, Nnaji said.

To guarantee uninterrupted power supply, he said the company adopted the tubular poles and double structure design.

The tubular poles adopted, according to him, will be difficult to vandalise, while a double structure design ensures that a bad circuit could be supplied from another area, while the bad one is being fixed.

The power plant is to be powered by gas, he said, noting that the company has built a gas plant at Shell company flow station at Owaza in Ukwa West Local Government Area of Abia State and laid a 27-kilometre pipeline from the gas station to the power plant at Osisioma.

In his words, “All these are completed and we were ready by the time the privatisation happened. However, the people in government decided to sell this ring fence to Enugu Disco.

“We did not ask for sovereign guarantee, which is normally required in a power project like this, because we were dealing with our people. But once you sell the ring fence, there is no more security on investment.”

He urged the Aba business community to add their voice to ensure that the issue was resolved.

“Now, it is not just Bart Nnaji, it is all of us, it is about institutions that participated in seeing that Aba becomes industrialised, like some provinces in China and several other places in the world, where power is taken for granted.

“Government set up committees after committees to look into this. Most of the time, what they were trying to do was to find a way to upturn the agreement.

“The eight committees they set up to look into the matter, all came out with the same report that the Federal Government should implement its agreement with Geometric Power Limited. We even went to court and the court said the same thing.

“And since then nothing has happened. This is a country of impunity. I will like you people to add your voice, so that the president will listen and do something.

“The vice president has started a dialogue to resolve the issue and I can tell you that once it is resolved we don’t have more than four months and we will have constant electricity in Aba, “he said.