Amidst varying figures of the daily consumption figure for Premium Motor Spirit (PMS) in Nigeria, the Federal Government is to spend N250 million on a study on this just as it plans to expend N3.450 billion on the Mambilla hydropower and other power projects.
According to a copy of the 2023 Appropriation Bill obtained from the Budget Office, the Ministry of Finance, Budget and National Planning will spend the N250m to engage “a consultant for the verification of imported petroleum products and the determination of daily consumption of product,” a project it said is already on.
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Recall that the Nigeria Customs Service (NCS) recently disclaimed a 98 million litre average daily consumption of petrol bandied by officials and called for a probe.
In its response, the Nigerian National Petroleum Company (NNPC) Ltd said the average daily figure from January to August 2022 was 68m litres and totalling 16.46bn litres of imported petrol.
The NNPC figure was 1m litres higher than the 67m litre figure published by the Nigerian Midstream and Downstream Petroleum Regulatory Authority (NMDPRA).
NMDPRA regulates the sale of petroleum products and does the measurement of petrol imports and dispatches from 4m litres to 100m litres daily.
For the Mambilla hydropower which has been surrounded by controversies, the Ministry of Power will spend N1.1bn of its N232.6bn capital funding.
Meanwhile, despite huge sums spent on the project, said to be over 30 years on the drawing board, residents around the site in Taraba State said work was yet to begin on the project.
Some said some survey work was done but that no compensation had been paid.
In the 2023 budgetary proposal, the government will spend N223m on consultancy fees, N100m for consultants to enumerate the communities and a N10m consultancy fee for land surveyors.
Another consultancy fee for the project will gulp N199m while N550m has been pegged as counterpart funding for the pre-commencement activities.
The government will also spend N20m on the construction of 70 megawatts (MW) power station in Sardauna LGA, Taraba, where the Mambilla hydropower is to be sited, along with a 70km length of 132 kilovolts double circuit evacuation facilities to the national grid.
On the 10MW Katsina wind farm, the ministry will spend N172m for operation and maintenance. It has also budgeted another N30m to build a 10MW solar plant on the same site.
The ministry will spend N2.1bn to provide solar power across five public facilities.
The 2MW solar power for the Nigeria Defence Academy (NDA) Kaduna has N300m; Naval Base, Port Harcourt for 1MW has N500m; 1MW for the Federal Ministry of Finance Headquarters Building Abuja has N500m; a 2MW plant at the Administrative Staff College, Badagry, Lagos, has N300m and another 1MW at the Teaching Hospital Damaturu at N500m.
