TheCable

Akinwunmi Ambode, governor of Lagos state, on Wednesday said the quest to achieve energy security can no longer be left for the federal government alone.

Speaking on the plans of the state to attain 24-hour power supply through generation of 3000 megawatts of electricity by 2022, Ambode said the bane of the power situation in the country is transmission.

He said the initiative was designed to resolve power crisis in the state and by extension in the country.

Ambode spoke at Lagos House, Ikeja, after receiving the report of the embedded power technical committee constituted by the state government.

“The reason we embarked on this initiative is that we believe strongly that if the power problem is solved in Lagos, it is technically solved in the whole of the country and so because Lagos has more or less tested a solution that works, we can scale this up and also address it on a national scale,” he said.

“The problem of power in Nigeria is the problem of transmission and that is the truth. Yes, we have generating companies and we have distributing companies and they say power is in the hands of the private sector, but we know technically that, that is not totally true.

“We also know that transmission is hundred percent owned by government, but we have tested here in Lagos and we have been able to provide 48 kilowatts of power without transmitting it which means that we generate and then distribute.

“So, if that works for 48 kilowatts, can we put Lagos into clusters and actually use embedded power initiative to drive the business of Lagos? That is what this initiative is all about and I want to thank all the stakeholders for submitting their business template into what government sees as the right step to take so that we can join hands together to say in the next two to five years, we can actually power Lagos and then grow our GDP.”

Ambode said his administration had the target to generate up to 3,000MW of power through accelerated deployment of embedded power plants in strategic locations in the state, within three to five years.

The governor said 350MW would be delivered by the first quarter of 2018, additional 850MW by the last quarter of 2018, and the balance of 1,800MW not later the third quarter of 2022.

He said the state government would support the power purchase agreements (PPAs) to be signed between the distribution companies and the embedded power providers “to enhance bankability of the projects”.