By Adedapo Adesanya
The partnership between The Niger Delta Power Holding Company (NDPHC) and the Benin Electricity Distribution Company (BEDC) will deliver additional 250 Megawatts (MW) to serve customer within the franchise area.
This was disclosed by the Managing Director of NDPHC, Mr Chiedu Igbo, at the signing ceremony in Lagos recently, revealing that the agreement has taken off with immediate effect.
Some of the initial project areas are Benin Bypass (industrial cluster near NDPHC’s power plant at Ihovbor, Benin-City, Edo State; Asaba, Delta State, Ondo South Senatorial District, Ondo State and interventions in Ekiti State.
He recalled that the two companies had in 2020, commenced exploring options to collaborate to deliver safe and reliable power to customers of the BEDC’s franchise area.
According to him, “Today, we are glad that we gather here for the purpose of signing a framework agreement for this collaboration.”
“For NDPHC, the project will enable us to deliver more than 250 megawatts of power to customers of BEDC’s franchise areas in Edo, Delta, Ondo, and neighbouring states.
“For BEDC, the project will help BEDC to satisfy its customers with reliable power and achieve an enhancement of its network and infrastructure,” Mr Igbo said.
He added that for BEDC’s customers, their homes and industries can now enjoy 24 hours power supply, noting tha for BEDC’s investors and NDPHC shareholders – trustees of Nigerian people- this project will deliver significant value.
He noted that the NDPHC has been concerned about the “insufficient dispatch of its power generation capacity, as well as liquidity challenges which means that only a small proportion of the power dispatched gets paid for. Meanwhile, many consumers remain unserved or underserved”.
In addition, the NDPHC boss explained that the journey to the agreement started with the initiation of the National Integrated Power Project (NIPP) by the federal government of Nigeria in 2004 as a government-funded initiative to stabilize the country’s power sector.
He said as a result of this, the government incorporated NDPHC as a limited liability company to serve as a legal vehicle to hold the NIPP for its states and local governments.
Since then, said Mr Ugbo, Nigeria Electricity Supply Industry has evolved significantly from the construction of NDPHC’s 10 power plants with a combined capacity of over 5,000MW, of which more than 4,000MW has been completed, to the privatization transactions from which BEDC emerged as one of the 11 distribution companies in Nigeria.
The evolution, according to him, has presented the industry players, including NDPHC and BEDC, with unique challenges.
He said for the distribution firms, the significant capital investments required to upgrade their respective networks has been difficult to raise due to industry challenges.
Meanwhile, the Chief Executive Officer of BEDC, Mrs Funke Osibodu, said her company aims at delivering incremental power from the NDPHC underutilised or stranded capacity to several industrial and commercial hubs through multiple solutions across the certain locations in Delta, Edo, Ondo and Ekiti for the electricity value chain.
She said under the agreement, BEDC and NDPHC will provide end-to-end power solutions across the value chain to deliver a minimum of 250 MW of additional power.
Mrs Osibodu said the collaboration will see the BEDC partner with NDPHC and others to identify and prioritize critical projects to increase power supply whilst improving on the technical and commercial environment.
She noted that the “focus will be the power supply to certain areas as well as upgrading of all critical distribution infrastructure”.
BEDC is the 4th largest Disco in distribution capacity and 3rd largest in the number of households among the Distribution Companies (Discos). It is responsible for the retail distribution of electricity in the four franchise states of Delta, Edo, Ekiti, and Ondo States.
Aduragbemi Omiyale 
Modupe Gbadeyanka