STARTLING discoveries were yesterday made by the members of the House of Representatives Committee on Power and Steel on their visit to Rivers State in continuation of their tour of the National Integrated Power Projects (NIPP) sites as contracts worth N58 billion that had begun on paper were at their best, at the take-off level.
The panel’s leader, Ndudi Godwin Elumelu, and his members discovered that despite the billions of naira paid contractors for the execution of these projects, they (the contractors) had done virtually nothing.
At Borikiri where a N1.2 billion contract was awarded to M.Schneider Engineering in 2006 for the construction of a 2 x 7 5MVA sub-station and five per cent mobilisation fee paid, work was yet to start.
M. Schneider’s contract entailed the installation of major equipment such as injection power transformers, circuit breaker, control relay and panels instrument transformer. But two years after nothing has been done.
Another incident, which shocked the lawmakers, took place at the Afam Power Station. They discovered that despite the payment of N4.5 billion out of N4.9 billion to Payma Bargh & Cartlark International for the construction of a 330KVA Afam extension, the firm was yet to begin work.
Similarly, on the Afam-Onne 330KVA transmission line project awarded to Energovod S.R.O valued at N1.2billon and for which N691 million was said to have been paid to the company and another N330 million to a consultant, work is yet to start.
Officials of the Power Holding Corporation of Nigeria (PHCN) informed the panel that ever since the contractors presented their engineering designs, no one had seen them at the Afam Power Plant.
Still at Afam, the committee discovered that despite the over $35 million spent on the power plant, its facilities were almost moribund.
The turbines, 15 and 16, for which over $8 million was purportedly spent, were not working.
The Chief Executive Officer, Mr. Micha Nwogu, revealed that the Ministry of Power had failed to carry out the mandatory 16,000 hours overhaul of the plant since 2001.
He revealed that the installed capacity of the Afam 5 power plant is 68 megawatts. However, due to a lack of maintenance this has dropped to 52 megawatts.
But the time the committee visited the site, none of the turbines was working.
The state governor, Chibuike Rotimi Amaechi, lamented the situation and Port Harcourt experience as pathetic, because the city is usually practically in darkness.
Addressing the committee members during their visit to the Government House, yesterday, the governor noted that even if states succeeded in the area of provision of adequate water and housing, the economy would continue to suffer if the issue of power supply was not addressed.
He disclosed that Port Harcourt alone needed between 200 and 250 megawatts of electricity, but noted with regret that it was not getting anything near that.
Amaechi blamed the upsurge of crime in the region on the absence of reasonable means of livelihood, maintaining that when the people were gainfully employed, crimes such as kidnapping would end.
“The struggle in the Niger Delta is not the struggle of under-development alone, it is essentially the struggle of unemployment and if you help us with electricity to kick-start the economy, we shall employ our people,” he said.
Elumelu explained that the committee embarked on public hearing involving all stakeholders in the sector and following certain discoveries they decided to visit the sites of some of the projects to ascertain the veracity of the claims to enable them to give a comprehensive report of their assignment.
The committee members also visited Rockson Engineering site at the Oil and Gas Free Zone where the management showed them some imported turbines.
The firm claimed that it was finding it difficult to convey the turbines across the Imo River.