Nigeria’s Minister of State for Power Nuhu Somo Wya has said the country will need to spend about US$6 billion annually on electricity generation and distribution across the country to attain its quest of becoming one of the 20 most industrialized nations in the world by 2020.
The local Nation newspaper Monday quoted the minister to have made the disclosure during his tour of facility at the Jebba Hydroelectric Complex in northern Nigeria.
‘We must not allow our children (to) inherit this depressing state of social and economic quagmire in the power sector or even be witnesses to the mess we are passing through. Let them only read it in history books,’ the minister said.
The minister said the government could not shoulder the cost alone, and that it had sought the intervention of some mega financial institutions such as International Finance Corporation (IFC).
Nigeria suffers a perennial power problem, resulting from the low generation of less than 4,000 mega watts for a population of 150 million.