Nigeria’s president, Muhammadu Buhari, has reiterated his government’s commitment to expand the country’s electricity sources and make solar and hydro feature prominently in the mix.
Buhari, in his address to the country’s citizens at its 57th Independence celebration, said with the help of both source of electricity, he hopes the country’s generation capacity would rise to 10,000 megawatts (MW) in 2020.
“Power remains a huge problem. As of September 12th, production of power reached an all-time high of 7,001 megawatts. Government is increasing its investment, clearing up the operational and financial logjam bedeviling the industry. We hope to reach 10,000 megawatts by 2020.
“Key priorities include better energy mix through solar and hydro technologies. I am glad to say that after many years of limbo, Mambilla power project has taken off,” said Buhari.
In July 2016, Nigeria signed power purchase agreements with 14 independent solar power plants investors. The projects are planned to generate circa 1125MW of electricity to the national grid and cost $2.5 billion, however, further developments on them have stalled over the country’s delay in concluding their respective power purchase agreements which have now been extended by another six months until January 2018.
