Nigeria: As Over 300 Investors Apply for PHCN Firms

Daily Independent

16 March 2011

Nigeria: As Over 300 Investors Apply for PHCN Firms

With an estimated population of one hundred and fifty million, there is no gainsaying that electricity is a multi-billion-dollar industry in a developing economy like Nigeria. And in a country that is threatened by mind-boggling unemployment figures and the attendant social vices, there is no other auspicious time for government to provide the enabling environment for massive investment in the power sector than now.

The grim state of power supply in the country was laid bare last week when the Minister of Finance, Olusegun Aganga, gave the lie to the self-deprecating figures Nigerians had bandied about in recent years. He declared that the country had never achieved 4,000 or 4,500 Megawatts of electricity, arguing that the highest peak ever attained for several years was 3,800 Megawatts. Even that figure, he explained, was only achieved under the current administration.

This newspaper regrets that Nigeria remains an underdeveloped economy, in spite of the humongous financial resources she has earned from the sales of hydrocarbon deposits since independence in 1960.