Otedola urges incoming administration to tackle power challenges

The chairman of Geregu Power Plc, Femi Otedola, has said that Nigeria’s perennial power shortage is a product of a lack of resolve by past governments to prioritise and tackle power challenges.

The businessman made this known while speaking at the closing gong event of the Nigerian Exchange on Tuesday.

“Aliko (Dangote), an individual, has built 2000 megawatts of power for his cement plant, his fertiliser plant, his refinery and a country, since I have been born, only 5000 megawatts,” Mr Otedola said.

“So, it’s appalling, disheartening that all the successive governments have failed in this regard. But I believe we are now at a stage that the power sector will get a lot of attention and priority.”

Mr Otedola stated that the Nigerian government still has idle power plants that were built some ten years ago, noting that transmission is a major issue in the power value chain. He added that any government meaning to transform the sector must take the transmission aspect of the value chain seriously.

This month, President Muhammadu Buhari endorsed a constitutional amendment bill that allows Nigeria’s 36 states to generate, transmit and distribute electricity in areas covered by the national grid.

Amperion, the power distribution subsidiary of Geregu Power, paid $132 million in 2013 to buy from the Nigerian government the first of the company’s power plants to be acquired under Mr Otedola’s leadership.

Geregu Power went public last October, listing 2.5 billion shares on the Nigerian Exchange t N100 per unit, and now trades at N323 per share.

The firm in February proposed a dividend payout of N20 billion for 2022, translating to N8 per share despite a drop of more than half in net profit.

That same month, the Fund for Export Development in Africa, a unit of Afreximbank, acquired a stake of 5 per cent in the company equivalent to 125 million ordinary shares. That makes it the second biggest shareholder after Mr Otedola.