The Transmission Company of Nigeria (TCN) has secured $2 billion to rehabilitate national grid infrastructure, and expand its transmission capacities up to 20,000 MW within the next three years. Usman Gur Mohammed, Managing Director of TCN, made the announcements at a power sector stakeholders meeting in Kano.
He said that because of the liquidity issue in the power sector, TCN had sought the support of the Ministries of Finance and Power, which led to the raising of funds from multilateral donors for the expansion of the grid. The fund has been raised from the World Bank, African Development Bank, Islamic Development Bank, Japanese Agency for International Cooperation (JAICA), and the European Union.
He said: “We have advertised for transformer capacities for Kano, Kaduna, Lagos, and Shiroro regions. These are part of the projects we have been able to raise from the multilateral regions, and the total capacity we are working towards achieving is 20,000 MW in the next three years. We have also restarted some projects that had not been doing well, like the Abuja Transmission Ring Project, which is due to put three substations within the capital territory, and provide another avenue for supply from Lafia. We have also resuscitated the JAICA project that had been on the drawing board for a long time. Those two projects, plus the project that we are going to raise now, is about $1.55 billion.”