PRESIDENT Olusegun Obasanjo will, Tuesday, commission the Independent Power Project of the Rivers State Government at Omoku.
The project built at over 60 billion naira is to generate constant power for the state. Mr Magnus Abe, who spoke to newsmen in Port Harcourt, said to ensure that all sections of the state benefit from the project the state government released the sum of 800 million naira to the Ministry of Power to use in upgrading substations in some parts of the state and build new ones where necessary.
He said the plant would be switched on Tuesday but not all parts of the state would immediately begin to enjoy uninterrupted power supply. Because facilities of the Power Holding Company in some parts of the state need to be upgraded for the kind of currents that would come from the Omoku power station.
He also assured that the creeks would also enjoy unterrupted power when the marine cables which would evacuate current to such areas had been installed. He said work had already commenced in this direction. ��You know that power should be able to reach consumers as it is produced. So for that reason we have brought out eight hundred million naira to help the present facilities of NEPA so as to get this power to the peope. You know NEPA have not seen the kind of power that we are bringing, they have never seen this kind of amount of power before on any of their lines.�
Continuing, he said that it was not true that the federal government at a time took over the IPP project in the state. According to him, what the President did when he inspected it sometime ago was to adopt a similar thing for the federal government.
�It was after the President visited Omoku and saw what was going on there that he decided that on a national scale we need to do this. He gave directive for what you call Niger Delta Power Plants to commence. Because at Omoku, the state government has already put in place the basic insfrastructure, they located it there. So all they would do is just to hook up to the facilities there,� he said.
The President is also expected to commission the Stella Obasanjo hall at Iriebe, the new presidential lodge in the new Brick House, Port Harcourt and the General Hospital at Ngo in Andoni local government area of the state.