With the death on Monday, March 7, of Dr Doyin Okupe, twice a presidential spokesman, Nigeria has been deprived of a pan-Nigerian politician. Okupe, who died of cancer at 72 in a Lagos hospital, was free of the primordial tendencies that have over the years made our country underachieve despite stupendous resources. Though he and Chief Moshood K.O. Abiola, the Social Democratic Party presidential candidate in the June 12 1993 vote, hailed from Ogun State, the National Republican Republican Convention candidate in the election, Bashir Tofa, had no difficulty assigning the most trusted role in the election to him: the…
Author: C Don Adinuba
Geometric Power, Nigeria’s foremost integrated electricity group, has decried the acute shortage of natural gas supply to its 188-megawatt plant in the Osisioma Industrial Estate in Aba, Abia State, saying it is affecting the state’s economic growth. “Due to the grave shortage of gas”, said Ugo Opiegbe, the managing director of Aba Power, Nigeria’s 12th electricity distribution company which is Geometric Power’s embedded firm, “we have been constrained to import 25megawatts from the Niger Delta Power Holding Company (NDPHC) at a huge cost, just to ensure that our customers have supplies, no matter the cost to us”. Continued Opiegbe in…
Amid intermittent travel advisories by Western diplomatic missions in the country to their citizens on visiting parts of the country because of the nationwide security challenges, the British High Commissioner to Nigeria, Richard Montgomery, on Tuesday, August 21, 2024, led a delegation to the $800m Aba Independent Power Project built by the Geometric Power group. Though the news media have not provided the reason for the visit, it is likely to be about Aba’s growing stature as an industrial and economic centre following the commissioning of the 188megawatt Geometric Power Plant in Aba and the embedded distribution firm, the Aba…
The British High Commissioner to Nigeria, Dr Richard Montgomery, has described the model of the Geometric Power in developing the Aba Independent Power Project in Abia State as impressive. “The Geometric model is impressive”, declared the High Commissioner after inspecting the facilities in the $800m power project which comprises a 188-megawatt gas-fired plant with an embedded distribution firm that provides electricity to nine of the 17 local government areas in Abia State. “It represents the kind of innovation needed to drive sustainable development across Nigeria”. Dr Montgomery was accompanied by the Abia State Commissioner for Power and Public Utilities, Engineer…
The Igbo community in the midwestern state of Michigan will hold its Igbo Day and the first New Yam Festival in Detroit City on Saturday, August 17. The festival will feature “authentic Igbo cuisines, masquerades, cultural music, and a cultural competition”, according to the president of the Igbo Cultural Festival of Michigan (ICAM), Gabriel Ugwu. Sponsored by Mabel Hotel in Asaba, headquarters of Nigeria’s Delta State, the 2024 ICAM will be held at the northwestern campus of the Wayne County Community College, West Detroit. “We are lucky to have as our special guest Professor Bart Nnaji, the chairman of the…
The chairman of the Africa Investment and Trade Summit and Exhibition (AITE), Tunde MacAlabi, has commended the Minister of Aviation and Aerospace Development, Festus Keyamo, for fighting relentlessly for Nigeria’s interests in aviation since his appointment a year ago. “If most of Keyamo’s predecessors had been committed to national interests as the present aviation minister, the Nigerian aviation sector would have been as competitive as that of any of the developed nations,” MacAlabi asserted in a statement in Lagos today. Recalling how Keyamo cancelled the controversial flight deal which his predecessor entered into with Ethiopian Airlines because it was skewed…
Geometric Power Ltd, Nigeria’s leading electric power integrated group, has described the death yesterday in Abuja of a foremost elder statesman, Chief Emmanuel C. Iwuanyanwu, as unexpected and shocking. “He was one of our staunchest supporters”, the company said today in a statement quoting its founder and chairman, Professor Bart Nnaji, as saying. “Iwuanyanwu, 82, and a Fellow of the Nigerian Society of Engineers (NSE), was extremely proud of the work we are doing at Geometric Power Ltd by fellow Nigerian engineers”. Continued the former Minister of Power who has also been the Minister of Science and Technology: “Though he…
No patriotic Nigerian should be delighted at the grave challenges facing the 650 barrels per day Dangote Refinery in Lagos. The challenges make efficient operations very difficult. Though Nigeria is a major oil exporter, the refinery commissioned early last year is now compelled to import crude from Brazil. The Nigerian Midstream and Downstream Petroleum Regulatory Authority ( NMDPRA) has accused it of producing substandard automative gas oil (AGO), and, worse, of having no licence for operation. Frustrated at the turn of events, Aliko Dangote, founder and chairman of the $19 billion industrial complex in Lekki comprising a refinery, a petrochemical…
As Bart Nnaji, founder and chairman of the Geometric Power group, Nigeria’s only integrated electricity organization, turns 68 today (Saturday, July 13, 2024), one important lesson our countrymen and women can learn from him is the imperative of matchless optimism. Even when all hope is forlorn and all available evidence points to gloom and doom, Nnaji not only expects the best but also works passionately towards delivering superior performance. At a time when top Western multinationals are leaving Nigeria in droves, Nnaji is demonstrating unparalleled patriotism: he is leading General Electric of the United States, the world’s oldest and largest…
One of the world’s foremost humanitarian organizations, Medicines Sans Frontieres(MSF), also known as Doctors Without Borders, can work effectively only when it enjoys the support of leaders where it operates, according to its team currently on a tour of Nigeria’s Southeast geopolitical zone. The team told the geometric Power chairman, Professor Bart Nnaji, in his residence in Enugu today that local support has become more crucial because of the nature of the operations of the organization which won the 1999 Nobel Prize for Peace for its extraordinary efforts in crisis places throughout the world. “While some other international organizations work…
Despite founding Nigeria’s most successful hydrocarbon geophysical consulting firm and contributing significantly to the development of the oil and gas sector, Boniface Madubunyi, who died at 90 on May 13th in London, was practically unknown to the Nigerian public. That’s the way he wanted it. Very few persons anywhere can be so successful and yet so self-effacing, almost monastic in their lifestyle. Madubunyi, an engineer trained at the University of Manchester in the early 1960s who was given the Member of the Federal Republic (MFR) national honour under the President Olusegun Obasanjo administration, set up a geophysical firm, Mabon Geophysical…
Aba Power, Nigeria’s newest electricity distribution company, has expressed surprise that a part of its coverage area was affected by the nationwide shutdown of electricity services by the country’s labour unions pressing for an increased national minimum wage and the withdrawal of the recent increase in electricity tariff for individuals and organizations receiving up to 20 hours of supply daily. The strike, which started on Monday, was suspended earlier today (Tuesday) for a week following discussions yesterday between the Federal Government and labour leaders. “Every Nigerian is surprised that some individuals enforcing the strike should disrupt our operations because we…
Aba Power Limited, Nigeria’s youngest electricity distribution, has given out over 22,000 smart prepaid meters since last November when it initiated its Mass Metering campaign. “Much as our stakeholders are satisfied with our speed since we rolled out the programme”, Aba Power managing director, Ugo Opiegbe, told select journalists in Aba today, “we will do much more in the next six months and achieve a far greater target after that.” It is estimated that meter installation for some 200,000 registered customers in the Aba Ring-fenced Area will cost at least N32 billion. Aba Power commenced commercial operations in September 2022…
Almost two months after the other 11 electricity distribution firms in Nigeria increased their tariff for Band A customers due to the prevailing economic situation in the country, Aba Power Ltd has adjusted its tariff. Its managing director, Ugo Opiegbe, confirmed to newsmen in a telephone interview this morning that Band A Maximum Demand (MD) customers, who receive power for at least 20 hours daily, will now pay between N114.66 and N117.1 per kilowatt hour (KWh), from N109.79 KWh. For non-MD customers in Band A, their tariff is even lower, pegged at N106.56/kWh. “It is still the lowest in the country for that…
The chairman of the Africa Investment and Trade Summit and Exhibition (AITE), Tunde MacAlabi, has cautioned the Federal Government over what he considers its undue excitement over the scheduled return of Emirates Airlines to Nigeria in October. “There is no need for the excitement”, declared MacAlabi in a statement in Lagos today “because it would seem that the most important question in the Bilateral Air Services Agreement (BASA) between Nigeria and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) has not been addressed. “The question is how to address the gross imbalance in the flights between Nigeria and the UAE, all the more…
Tokunbo Wahab, the Honorable Commissioner for the Environment in Lagos State, may end up as the star of the Babajide Sanwo-Olu administration because of the vision and zeal he displays in discharging his duties. If Wahab had been in office right from Governor Sanwo-Olu’s emergence in 2019, Lagos would have been a far better place, at least in environmental terms. However, it is not good that the impact of this ebullient commissioner has yet to be felt reasonably in the Ajah-Addo-Badore axis, probably owing to its out-of-sight location, so to speak. The Honourable Commissioner will be shocked at what he…
The chief executive of the Africa Investment and Trade Summit and Exhibition (AITE), Tunde MacAlabi, has lauded the Air Peace chairman, Allen Onyema, for his unwavering patriotism, noting that the resumption of the Lagos-London flights by his airline on March 30 has crashed fares on the lucrative route by about 50% for the benefit of the Nigerian people. In a statement in Lagos this morning signed by himself, the AITE chairman said that the significant reduction in fares “owes to Onyema’s love of Nigeria. “He could have gone into a furtive deal with the only two foreign air carriers operating…
Chukwuemeka Pius Ezeife, Anambra State governor from January 1992 to November 1993 who died last month at 86, hauled himself up by the bootstraps and became an embodiment of progress. He took to apprentice trading on leaving primary school owing to a paucity of funds. Yet, before anyone knew it, he had obtained a doctorate in economics from Harvard, becoming a lecturer at Makerere University in Uganda. At the end of the Nigerian Civil War in 1970, he rejoined the federal civil service, retiring as a permanent secretary. He then dived straight into business and left a footprint in no…
In his famous study of leadership, Jim Collins, regarded as one of the most engaging leadership scholars across the globe, states in his book entitled Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap and Others Don’t, that there are otherwise excellent leaders who have the weakness of not wanting their successors to do very well. They relish being described as indispensable, even after they have left office. You can never hear them say anything positive about their predecessors or successors. But the best and most effective leaders, according to Collins, are those who acknowledge the contributions of others and…
There is so much the Igbo can celebrate about themselves. Take their brilliant performance in education which is phenomenal. Whether in the West African School Certificate examination or the Joint Admissions Matriculation examination or the entrance examination into Federal Government Colleges or into the Federal Government-owned School for the Gifted and Talented in Abuja, the story is the same. Even in global educational competitions, the Igbos are outstanding. This is by no means fortuitous. By 1945 when the Second World War ended, there were a handful of Igbo graduates because the Igbos live in the interior; the Europeans who brought…
If you ask Nigerians to name past power ministers randomly, it is most likely that they will start with Bart Nnaji, the preeminent engineering professor in the United States who has for almost two decades been almost synonymous with history-changing initiatives in the Nigerian electric power sector. Nnaji left office over a decade ago. He served for only one year, from July 2011 to August 2012. Even when he was the Presidential Adviser on Power and Chairman of the Presidential Task Force on Power (PTFP), Nnaji was the face of the country’s power sector. Not just as regards the reforms…
As Bart Nnaji, globally acknowledged engineering professor and Minister of Science and Technology from August, 1993, to November, 1993, who was to become the Minister of Power from July, 2011, to August, 2012, marks 66 years on Wednesday, July 13, 2022, many Nigerians, on taking a critical look at the electric sector today, are likely to borrow an expression popularized by Nigeria’s founding president, Nnamdi Azikiwe, to pay homage to him: History vindicates the just. Much as Nnaji cannot be happy that the power sector has nosedived since 2012, the truth remains eternal that history has vindicated his strong opposition…
Security agents in Aba, the industrial city of Abia State, have arrested three youths in the state for vandalizing public electric supply equipment which recently plunged parts of the state into darkness for days. Air Commodore Nicholas Orjiude (retired), the chief security officer of Geometric Power Ltd, the owner of Aba Power Ltd which provides electricity to nine out of the 17 local government areas in Abia State, gave the names of the apprehended youths as Nnamdi Nwobilor and Desmond Nkangnobi as well as Chinemerem Okechi. Nwobilor and Okechi are from Osisioma on the outskirts of Aba where both the…
The Aba Power Project, a member of Geometric Power group, has launched a campaign against those vandals of its assets in nine of the 17 Local Government Areas it is serving in Abia State, according to its managing director, Patrick Umeh, a former commissioner with the Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission (NERC). The campaign is also being mounted against those who steal critical components in distribution transformers, distribution infrastructure and illegal connections as well as those who engage in meter bypassing. “It is extremely difficult to understand how some individuals are so unconscionable as to put industries, whole estates, villages and…
The third of the three Geometric Power Company’s thermal turbines sent to Houston, Texas, in the United States for periodic retrofitting is back in the country, preparatory to the commissioning of the 141 megawatt Aba Power Project later in the year. Two of the three turbines sent out in December, 2019, to Houston, Texas in the United States for a comprehensive check at the plant of General Electric (GE), the world’s biggest electricity equipment manufacturing group in the world, have already been reinstalled at the Geometric Power Plant at Osisioma Industrial Layout in Aba, Abia State, while the third is…
Nigeria’s search for increased electric power supply has received a major boost with the emergence of a new electric distribution company in Aba, Abia State, bringing the number of electricity distribution firms in the country to 12. The previous ones are located in Abuja, Jos, Kano, Ibadan, Kaduna, Port Harcourt, Benin, Yola, Enugu, Ikeja and Eko, with the last two covering Lagos, Nigeria’s commercial capital. They were all built by the government, but privatized on November 1, 2013. The new electricity distribution company (DisCo) is known as the APL Electric Company Ltd. It is understood that APL Electric Company is…
As Chief Emeka Anyaoku, the first African to serve as Secretary General of the Commonwealth of Nations, turns 89 today, the government and people of Anambra State celebrate this global citizen who thinks home. He is in every sense exemplary. Anyaoku at 89 One of the most decorated Africans in modern history, as exemplified by 34 honorary doctoral degrees he has received from various local and foreign universities, Chief Anyaoku’s tenure as the Commonwealth chief executive from 1990 to 2000 is spoken about throughout the world in nostalgic terms. The organization, for example, became a global vehicle for the mobilization…
When he received on Tuesday, August 31, a letter from the Revenue Mobilization Allocation and Fiscal Commission pronouncing Anambra a petroleum-bearing state with all the benefits like entitlement to the 13% derivation principle in the sharing of national revenue, Governor Willie Obiano read the letter twice. Convinced it is real, he passed it to three aides around him and recited a scriptural passage which reads: “I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith. Henceforth there is laid up for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge,…
The people and Government of Anambra State have received with sadness the departure of two former First Ladies, Mrs Victoria Aguiyi-Ironsi, and Mrs Adanma Okpara, who died a day apart last weekend. Mrs Aguiyi-Ironsi was the widow of Nigeria’s first military Head of State, Major General Johnson Thomas Aguiyi-Ironsi, who also the first indigenous General Officer Commanding (GOC), Nigerian Army. Mrs Okpara, on the other hand, was the widow of Dr Michael I. Okpara, the Premier of the Eastern Nigerian Region from 1960 to 1966 when Nigeria experienced its first military coup d’etat. While Mrs Aguiyi-Ironsi died at almost 98…
The Anambra State Government has commended the Court of Appeal sitting in Kano for setting aside the controversial judgment of the Jigawa State High Court at Birnin Kudu of June 30 recognizing Jude Okeke as the National Chairman of the All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA). In a judgment delivered today, the Court of Appeal unanimously recognized Chief Victor Oye as the party’s national chairman and consequently affirmed the former Central Bank of Nigeria Governor, Professor Chukwuma Charles Soludo, as the APGA candidate in the November 6 gubernatorial election in the state. “Hope in the Nigerian judiciary as the temple of…
