The Minister of Power, Works and Housing,
Mr. Babatunde Fashola, said the federal government has commenced
discussions with the Taraba State Governor, Mr Dickson Ishaku on the
construction of 3050megawatts (mw) Mambilla Hydropower Plant in the
state.
The project has been on the drawing board for over 30 years with little progress achieved on it.
The minister, who spoke at a public
lecture in Lagos yesterday, said: “We have opened discussions with the
Governor of Taraba State, Governor Dickson Ishaku, who incidentally was
once a minister of state for power.
“The first thing to do is to acquire the land and deal with compensation issues, which the governor has promised to deal with.”
He said that if built, the project would be “the single largest power plant with over 3,000mw in one place and it potentially takes us close to steady power.”
He said that if built, the project would be “the single largest power plant with over 3,000mw in one place and it potentially takes us close to steady power.”
He said the next step after acquiring the project land will be to create
an earth road to the site to enable more tests of soil and related
issues take place.
“The feasibility study has been done and so too the environmental impact assessment. We move one day at a time closer to starting Mambilla.”
“The feasibility study has been done and so too the environmental impact assessment. We move one day at a time closer to starting Mambilla.”
The project has been valued at $5.732billion (about N1.140trillion) with
the Engineering, Procurement and Construction (EPC) contract proposed
for two Chinese companies, Gezhouba Construction Group Corporation
(CGGC), and the Sinohydro Corporation.
A ministry official said the project would take 63 months to complete and be handed over to the federal government.
Nigeria is expected to contribute 25 per cent of the project’s fund while the China Export Import Bank provides 75 per cent.
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