My Political Ambition Won’t Affect Aba Integrated Power Project– Barth Nnaji

A former Minister of Power and Chairman of Geometric Power Limited, Barth Nnaji, has said that his political ambition will not affect the Aba Integrated Power Project.

The ex-minister who has declared intention to govern Enugu State under the Peoples Democratic Party denied any possible collapse of his company on Arise Tv on Monday.

When Nnaji embarked on the power project, his target was to help improve the poor power supply in Aba, an economic hub in the South-East.

Nnaji’s Geometric Power Limited and Aba Power secured a 20-year concession from the federal government to exclusively supply power to the Aba and its surrounding communities.

The Aba IPP comprises an installed141 MW gas fired power plant and a 27km gas pipeline.

In Aba, approximately two-third of all households generate almost 136MW of electricity through generators while about 92MW is generated by both commercial and industrial consumers, the company had reported.

His political quest to become the next governor of Enugu State by 2023 is said to be a distraction that might affect the power project.

But the former minister said his company had been structured to survive without him.

He said, “I do not run a key man risk company. A key man (risk) company will die if anything hits the founder. So, what we have done is to ensure that we have managers and people who are in the executive management in the various companies that compose the Aba Integrated Power Project.

“We have people who are actually running the company. I am confident that they will be able to run the company with or without me. The investors in our company can feel confident that these people are capable.

“I’m not in Aba and I don’t have to be in Aba. That is the bottom line.”

He also lamented the problem of poor power supply caused by the failures of the national grid, generating companies and the distribution companies.

Nnaji said, “This morning, I was sad to hear that power has dropped below 4,000mw and we as a nation should not be talking about 4,000-3,000mw in a country of 200 million people.

“We cannot have just national control of power. You can have national power grids, but there should be regional grids and there is nothing in the constitution that prevents this. States don’t have enough money to build their own power plants except maybe Akwa Ibom, Rivers and to an extent Lagos.

“If you have regional grids, then states can now work with the private sector to build power projects that will make it possible for them to have reliable power and what we have done in Aba is an illustration of this.”