Written by Rasheed Komolafe, Lagos
Tuesday, 04 August 2009 22:26
Reprieve is in the offing for the nation's near- comatose energy sector, as the authorities in Ghana yesterday said that arrangements have been concluded to supply electricity to Nigeria.

Ghana's Minister of Energy, Dr. Joe Oteng-Adjei, said yesterday that arrangements are now in place by Ghana to be "a major exporter" of electricity to Nigeria and other countries in the West African sub-region that may need it.

Oteng-Adjei, who was represented by his deputy, Kwaminai Donkor, at the fifth Aelex Lecture, in Lagos, said: "Ghana wants to be a major exporter of electricity and arrangements have been made for this".

Nigeria, he said, had declared a force majure in its supply of free flow of gas to Ghana. But this is not unexpected as we have, for long, planned an alternative for this even before we appended our signatures on the West African Gas Pipeline document".

The story now, he continued, is that we have discovered abundant gas in our west corridor. And even with this, we will not limit our source of power generation to gas".

Delivering a lecture entitled, "How Ghana Kept The Light On", Oteng-Ojei maintained that electrification in Nigeria should be taken out of partisan politics and be made a national issue.

Ghana, he said, was advancing its nuclear-for-electricity project, stressing that although Ghana did not have coal reserve, the country did not rely on gas alone for its electricity generation.

He said: "Supply of adequate, reliable and economically priced power supply is vital for the socio-economic development of every nation. It has been observed that the GDP growth rate of a nation has direct relationship with the growth in the per capita electricity consumption.

"The development of the various sectors of the economy, such as industry, agriculture, health, education, tourism, among others, depends heavily on reliable, adequate and economically priced power supply.

"The vision of energy sector of Ghana is to provide adequate and reliable energy supplies to all sectors of the Ghanaian economy to support socio-economic development, poverty reduction and also for export".

President Umaru Musa Yar'Adua, it would be recalled, had promised that his administration would provide 6,000 megawatts of electricity by December, this year.

He also said that his administration projected providing 10,000 megawatts of electricity by the end of 2010.

Though the Ghanaian official did not disclose how many megawatts of electricity his country would be transmitting to Nigeria, there are indications that it would add up to the projected megawatts the Federal Government targets producing.

In the 1970s, 80s, and 90s, the energy need of Ghana was supplied by Nigeria. Even the Obasanjo administration entered an agreement with the Ghanaian government for Nigeria to supply gas to Ghana through the West Africa Gas Pipeline.