Expert charges government on diversification of power generation 

The former Minister of Power, Professor Barth Nnaji has stressed the need for Nigeria to diversify its electricity generation and transmission to other sources aside gas.Nnaji said there are other ways of generating power in country, which are yet to be explored by the Government due to over dependence on oil.
 
Nnaji, who was the guest speaker at the 11th yearly project management lecture of the Department of Building, University of Lagos, said coal and hydro are other essential sources of generating power, which the country is yet to subscribe to.
 
“United states supply its people 40 per cent of its power from coal, United Kingdom about the same percentage while China is about 60 per cent.“We have coal in Nigeria, we are not making use of it, there are so many resources we have that we are not making use of, even the natural gas. Nigeria is more of a gas country than oil but are we even producing the gas? It is certainly not enough. Coal needs to be revisited to enable people develop and use it well, he said.

He said: “We can expect maximally to do 10,000 megawatts these way as a country, we need to make hale while the sun shines, and look for diversification of power and those sources must come from coal and natural gas. 
  
The former minister, who spoke on the theme: ‘Sustainable Development of the Power sector: The Role of Project Management noted that project management is complex and diverse. Sustainability for power is being able to have a robust way to produce electricity. A robust way to transmit and distribute power and an efficient and reliable fuelling of power plants. “The other aspect of sustainability is transmission. Transmission network in Nigeria is not adequate and we have power and gas transmission.

The calculation in general shows that transmission of power is easier to handle but some find ways of saying gas is easier to transmit. If we are talking about sustainability, the national grid should be a super grid but should have mini grid that can be sustainable. 
 
“When we have it, it is easier not to have a total wide country collapse and it is also possible to have embedded generation building power plant between particular grids and thee power plant feeds on the grid not relying on the national grid,” he explained.
   
Earlier in his address, Acting Head of Department of Building, Unilag, Dr. Olumide Adenuga, said the purpose of the lecture was borne out of the passion to appraise the current development in the power sector. Project management programme, according to him, is conceived to meet the project management challenges of the increasing large and complex projects, sometimes referred to as mega project. It is vital to the economic transformation and development of every nation as the industry is also known to be a major employer of labour and the driver of economic growth.