FG: Second Niger Bridge ready for commissioning

The Federal Government says the Second Niger Bridge, which will be handed over on May 20, is now ready for commissioning.

The Minister of Information and Culture, Lai Mohammed, disclosed this to reporters yesterday after the Federal Executive Council meeting.

He said: “The Second Niger Bridge is ready for commissioning. The contractor will hand it over on 20th of this month, it’ll be commissioned soon after.”

The Minister of State for Power, Jeddy Agba said the council approved the award of contract for the procurement of 25 numbers of 33 KV circuit breakers and 120 numbers of surge arrestors for systems use for Transition Company of Nigeria.  

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Prince Agba said the contract value was in the “neighbourhood” of N140m as argumentation for that. 

He said council also approved the variation due to price escalation on the construction of the Dukanbo Shonga 132 KV double circuit transmission line in Kwara State.

“The Shonga Farms Limited and the whole of that area has been in darkness for a long time. With this procurement we hope that in two months, we should have full power supply to those areas and restore farming and processing activities in that area. The cost is N1.5 billion.”

Agba assured that the epileptic power supply witnessed in recent times in different parts of the country would soon end as power generation and distribution would improve despite the rains.

Explaining the decline in power supply, he said, “You’ll agree with me that of late, we’ve had problems with gas supplies for generational companies. We just negotiated with the gas supply companies, NNPC limited to augment gas supplies to distributors at the going local rate. 

“Gas was sold to them at export rate, whose price differs and they collection is made on domestic rates. So there was a differential and the argument, however, we had an agreement with the NNPCL and natural gas company to supply gas to GENCOs commencing from last week, and they are buying at local price not at the export price.”