Osinbajo says Buhari administration’s infrastructure investments unmatched

Prof. Osinbajo stated this Monday in a presentation he delivered during the 3rd Ministerial Performance Review Retreat held at the State House Conference Centre, Abuja.

The Vice President who lauded the “game-changing” accomplishments of the administration, noted that “clearly, there is no administration to date that has invested anywhere close to our investment in infrastructure, from roads, rail, to power, and broadband infrastructure.”

He noted that the innovations adopted by the administration made the difference in the execution of key roads, rail and power and has laid the foundation for more remarkable achievements especially in power and broadband infrastructure.

According to him, “first is in the development of infrastructure and especially the creativity we have introduced to infrastructure financing. The financing menu which we adopted includes the Road Infrastructure Development and Refurbishment Investment Tax Credit Policy.

“This has incentivized the construction of over 1,500km of critical roads in key economic corridors. Under this scheme, the Dangote Group has substantially completed the reconstruction of the 34km Apapa-Oworonshoki-Ojota Expressway and the 43km Obajana-Kabba Road.

“Similarly, Nigeria LNG Limited is on track to complete the 38km Bodo-Bonny Road and Bridges Project by the end of 2023. Recently, the President gave approval to MTN to construct the N202billion Enugu-Onitsha Road.”

Continuing, the Vice President explained that “the second on the menu is the Presidential Infrastructure Development Fund (‘PIDF’) managed by the Nigeria Sovereign Investment Authority (NSIA) where we have leveraged more than $1billion in financing to facilitate the accelerated completion of the Second Niger Bridge, Lagos-Ibadan Expressway and Abuja-Kano Road.

President Muhammadu Buhari and Vice President Yemi Osinbajo doing the 'Coronavirus handshake'. [Twitter/@ToluOgunlesi] Pulse Nigeria

“The third is the Sukkuk Funds, and the fourth is the Infrastructure Corporation of Nigeria (‘InfraCorp’) established in 2021 with a seed capital of N1trillion from the Central Bank of Nigeria CBN, NSIA and the Africa Finance Corporation, AFC. All of these are the innovative ways we are able to fund infrastructure outside of the budget.”

In the Power Sector, the VP said it is “an area where there has been game-changing progress but the situation is rather like building a skyscraper, the foundation is several floors into the ground, and no one sees the work while this critical component of the building is being done. This is where we are in the power sector, a lot of foundational work is going on.”

Speaking about improvement in generating capacity in the power sector, the VP noted that “more than 4,000MW of additional power-generating assets will be completed under the life of this administration. These include the Zungeru Hydro, Kashimbilla Hydro, Afam III Fast Power, Kudenda- Kaduna Power Plant, the Okpai Phase 2 Gas Power Plant, the Dangote Refinery Power Plant and many others.”

“Recently, KPMG concluded a study showing that while the figure of 4,000MW is the average used daily on the grid, electricity delivered by the Nigerian Electricity Supply Industry, NESI on the whole which includes Grid, Captive and Embedded Power is in excess of 8,000MW daily not 4,000MW and also that installed capacity is in excess of 18,000MW, not 13,000MW.

Much of the improvement to 8,000MW has occurred under our administration and they include one, the 28 Grid Power plants with an installed capacity of 13,000MW and operational daily capacities of around 5,000MW. These include Power Plants in Egbin, Ughelli, Geregu, Kainji and others,” the Vice President added.

Prof. Osinbajo also mentioned other efforts targeted at improving generating capacity in the country.

He said “there are 266 Captive Power plants (mainly industrial over 1MW) with Installed capacities of 4,000MW and Daily Operational Capacities of around 2,500MW. These include the Dangote Cement Capacities in Obajana Ibese (400MW), and NLNG’s Bonny Island Power Plant (240MW) amongst others. These are never captured in the statistics but are part of the stock of NESI. In the future, many of these plants will integrate into the grid, in fact, some of them supply power to communities where they are already.

“Then there are the 16 Embedded Power Plants with 549MW of Installed Capacities and 190MW of Daily Operational Capacity. There is a whole range of generating capacity, most of them are not on the grid, they are captive or embedded depending on which ones they are. All of them contribute to our generating capacity on a regular basis.”

In the area of renewable energy, the VP said “our programme has also attained great momentum. The Solar Naija Programme launched under the Economic Sustainability Plan is designed to achieve 5 million solar connections impacting over 25 million Nigerians. the Ministry of Power is also driving an additional N49billion in off-grid funding through the #SolarPowerNaija via the CBN.

“There are also ongoing projects under the #SolarPowerNaija with NDPHC doing N7billion in solar projects, NNPC doing N22billion, NSIA doing N10billion and Infracredit/BOI doing N10billion in solar projects.”

Prof. Osinbajo identified another innovation in the sector — the National Mass Metering Programme as “an important component of our power programme.”

He said ‘this programme has helped greatly in advancing the fortunes of our electricity fortunes. It is being financed by CBN and has created 10,000 jobs and distributed 1 million meters and is establishing a structure to meter an additional 6 million households and sustainably eliminate the metering gap.

“One of the major complaints of our discos and the electricity industry is that there isn’t adequate metering. Most times, discos have to give estimated billings and this is a tremendous irritation to consumers.”

Speaking about projections in the industry, the VP said “there are now 41-meter factories present and functioning in Nigeria and have created 10,000 jobs. Going forward in the electricity industry (and there is so much that is going on there), it is proposed that the Transmission Company of Nigeria (TCN) be separated into two entities under the direct oversight of the Ministry of Power.

“And the two constituent parts would be TCN, to serve as a transmission service provider responsible for providing infrastructure for transporting electric energy across the whole of Nigeria and then the Independent System Operator to provide systems operations which is mainly about the management of power dispatch and grid security. And then the market operation function, which is market settlement administration.”

The VP added that “this arrangement will create independence between TCN as a regulator and participant and certainly improve the confidence of market participants.”