Power

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Chinedu Nebo, minister of power, hints that a national council on power is to be set up this year to ensure the success of the rural electrification scheme

|  By Vincent Nzemeke  |  Aug. 19, 2013 @ 01:00 GMT

TO ensure that its plan to electrify rural communities in the country is achieved, the federal government is to establish a national council on power before the end of this year.  Chinedu Nebo, minister of power, stated this in a statement issued on Monday, August 5, by Timothy Oyedeji, deputy director of press, in Abuja.

The statement said Nebo announced the establishment of the council when a delegation from the Nigeria Society of Engineers, NSE, led by its President, Mustapha Shehu, paid him a courtesy visit in Abuja. It quoted the minister as saying that President Goodluck Jonathan was committed to strengthening the rural electrification programme in the country. According to him, the proposed council will be responsible for co-ordination of electricity issues at the federal, state and local government levels. He noted that the rural populace had been short-changed for a very long time by lack of access to electricity.

Nebo commended the NSE for addressing the problems of its members and urged the members to brace-up for an impending growth in the power generation and distribution sub-sectors of the economy. ”Unless the country has well trained engineers, there will be influx of foreign engineers who will want to take over the jobs from Nigerians. We now have more Independent Power Producers , IPPs,  in the country, hence we need more trained engineers to man the power plants.’’

Nebo assured the society that he would grant its request to have a representative on the boards of the National Power Training Institute of Nigeria, NAPTIN, and the Rural Electrification Agency, REA. The minister also solicited the support of the NSE in government’s quest to the actualisation of the coal-to-power initiative. He said that his experience in China, showed that clean coal technology would guarantee the use of coal with minimal pollution, adding that “coal is globally used to generate power.’’

The statement quoted Mustapha Shehu, leader of the delegation, as saying that the NSE was ready to engage professional engineers who would be saddled with running of the affairs of engineering-based ministries in the country. He requested the minister to assist in positioning engineers to partake in the increased business of power generation and distribution. Shehu also requested for the minister’s assistance in the completion of the on-going NSE secretariat and the 2014 World Engineering Summit which would take place in Nigeria.

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