“This is a project that was started in 2004”- Governor Alex Otti speaks on the 181-megawatt geometric power plant in the Aba

Governor Alex Otti of Abia State has explained that a number of things contributed to the delay of the 181-megawatt geometric power plant in the Aba area of the state.

“This is a project that was started in 2004” during the administration of Governor Orji Uzor Kalu, Otti of the Labour Party said on Channels Television’s Politics Today programme on Thursday.

The $800 million project including the building 27km natural gas pipeline, championed by Geometrics Power Limited, has the capacity to generate and distribute 181 megawatts of power.

A new electricity distribution company, the Aba Power Limited Electric, has started taking electricity from the plant and supplying it to about nine of the 17 local government areas in the South-East state.

On Monday, Vice President Kashim Shettima inaugurated the geometric power plant in Aba, the industrial hub of the state.

The power plant which was described as the first integrated electricity facility in Nigeria is located in the Osisioma industrial hub of Aba in Abia.

“When that was resolves, Shell which owned the major oil block that was supposed to supply gas to Geometric has sold it to another company whose focus was not gas for domestic use but export

“By the time we took over on the 29th of May, we sat down with Geometric a few times and engaged with NNPC and NNPC deployed their partners and gas was made available.”

The governor said the plant currently supply 141 megawatts power, the capacity at this time, is expandable to 181 megawatts when the final turbine is delivered.

According to him, the third turbine of the plant has been fired and all the three turbines are operational and “power outage will the exception rather than the rule which is the situation at this time”.

Otti said it would be difficult to say that his predecessor, Okezie Ikpeazu played a role in the project, adding that there was no evidence that the Abia State Government has an equity in the plant. “I have set up a team to dig into the facts,” he said.