By Bliss Okperan
The Minister of Foreign Affairs, Mr Maitama Tuggar, has said that there will be a significant improvement in electricity supply by the first half of 2024 after the completion of the Ajaokuta Abuja Kaduna Kano project (AKK).
Mr Tuggar disclosed this on Tuesday during an interview with Channels Television’s prime-time programme, Politics Today.
“In the coming year, by the first half of next year (2024), there will be a remarkable improvement in the electricity supply in Nigeria,” he said on the show.
Recall that former President Muhammadu Buhari in 2018 promised to expand Nigeria’s electricity capacity, which is currently at 4,000 megawatts, to 25,000 megawatts by 2025 when he had a deal with Siemens Energy in Germany, under the Presidential Power Initiative, but the project has not been actualized.
Mr Tuggar, a presidential team member at the G20 Compact with Africa Economic Conference in Germany, said that the Siemens deal is back.
He added that the Siemens gas deal between Nigeria and Germany will be continued by President Tinubu’s administration.
“The fact that we are exporting gas to Germany or we intend to do that does not mean that we are depriving Nigeria’s domestic gas needs; “… that will be fulfilled as well, but you also need the revenue that would accrue from such exports to invest further in taking electricity and gas to other parts of Nigeria. So, it’s all interconnected, and one does not stop the other from happening.”
According to the Minister, the setbacks experienced in the past would be managed by the Tinubu administration.
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