Outstanding work on Nigeria’s pioneer 10 megawatts (mw) wind farm located in Lamber Rimi Katsina State would be completed and the facility commissioned for power generation within the first quarter (Q1) of 2017, Mr. Babatunde Fashola, the country’s minister for power has said.

Fashola said recently in the local Channels Television talk show that outstanding equipment for the completion of the work have been shipped from Europe and should be in the country shortly.

“The Katsina wind mill that we resuscitated, the equipment to finish it just left Europe on the 2nd or 3rd of January and so that should finish again in this first quarter,” said Fashola.

The project which was reportedly contracted to French firm, Messrs Vergnet SA in 2010 at a contract sum of €18,500,000 plus N494, 020,000 with a completion period of 24 months has been stuck in degrees of construction delays and controversies.

Its commissioning was scheduled for 2012 but it never happened. It also got millions of naira in annual budgetary allocations from the government with no expenditure details. A fresh N904, 546,641 million was budgeted for the project by the ministry of power in its proposed 2017 fiscal budget.

Fashola also disclosed that the government had other renewable energy projects slated for completion in the 2017 fiscal year.

According to him: “In terms of energy production, in the next few days we will finish the second phase of the Usman Dam solar power. It was about 800 watts before, it is supposed to be 1.2 megawatts – the second phase would be commissioned in a number of days.

“We have finished the Gurara power station now and the substation that should take the power in Kaduna is also now completed and we are doing pre-commissioning testing.

“We should also see the completion of the Dadinkowa station. And the university power programme in terms of rural electrification.