Britain visits Fashola to support Nigeria’s power sector
British High Commissioner to Nigeria, Mr. Paul Arkwright, has assured that the British Government would support power sector reform in Nigeria as he visited the Minister of Power, Works and Housing, Mr Babatunde Fashola, in order to identify areas of collaboration in power sector infrastructure development.
“The idea was to support President Muhammadu Buhari’s agenda on diversification, as no meaningful progress can be made without effective power sector,” he said.
The high Commissioner assured that arrangement is ongoing for some British companies to take advantage of the opportunities available in Nigeria’s power sector.
“We discussed issues of rural electrification at the meeting with a view to using UK expertise in solar energy to address rural electrification problem in the country.
“However, getting transmission line through hundreds of miles to rural communities is not really feasible, so our discussion centred on the use of solar energy for such communities” Arkwright said.
In a related development, the Minister of Power, Works and Housing, said the power sector is a major contributor in getting Nigeria out of the economic recession by improving electricity supply to industrial, commercial, small and medium enterprises.
Fashola stated this at the presentation of a book to him titled ‘Power Sector Under President Muhammadu Buhari’ in Abuja recently.
He revealed that the sector is one of the five key intervention programmes of the Federal Government’s Economic Recovery and Growth Plan (ERGP) recently launched by the government.
He commended the author, Mr. Uche Aneke, for his in-depth knowledge of the sector and simplifying the knowledge of electricity to the ordinary Nigerian.
During the monthly operators’ tour meeting, Fashola explained that the power sector needed to engage everybody so as to reveal to Nigerians government’s effort.
Mr. Aneke earlier disclosed that the book made an effort to document activities in the power sector, especially the giant strides the minister made since coming on board.
