The African Export-Import Bank’s (Afreximbank) $50 million intervention has helped turn around the long-delayed Geometric Power project in Aba, Abia State, enabling the company to complete and commission a power plant that is now supplying electricity to homes, businesses and industries in the commercial city.

The Group Managing Director of Geometric Power Group, Mrs Agatha Nnaji while fielding questions from Journalists at the Geometric Power Plant in Aba, Abia state to mark the Afreximbank Season 2 Impact Stories site visits yesterday said the financing was a major turning point for the project, which had suffered years of delays and accumulated additional costs before Afreximbank stepped in.

She said the bank’s intervention went beyond providing funds, as it helped revive a project that had faced serious financial, technical and institutional challenges and had remained incomplete for years.

According to her, Geometric Power had spent seven years maintaining facilities and keeping staff while the project was unable to commence operations because of challenges associated with the power sector privatisation process.

“We had staff that had to be paid to continue to maintain it. But at the end of the day, when we now came up with the actual amount that we needed to complete, Afrexim came to the rescue,” she said.

Nnaji said Afreximbank provided $50 million to enable the company to complete the project and eventually commission the plant.

She said the bank was willing to finance the project because it understood the economic importance of reliable electricity to Aba, particularly the thousands of manufacturers and small businesses operating in the city.

“Afreximbank came because they saw the vision. They understood the impact it would have on the people who were going to serve,” Nnaji said.

The impact of the intervention, she explained, is now being seen in the steady electricity supply available to businesses and households in Aba.

Nnaji said the project had installed generation capacity of 141 megawatts from three turbines, with the company already preparing to increase capacity to 188 megawatts through the installation of a fourth turbine.

She said Aba currently consumes an average of about 50 megawatts, meaning that the capacity already installed could support further expansion within the city.

According to her, the availability of electricity has also reduced the dependence of businesses on diesel generators, thereby lowering their operating costs and reducing environmental pollution.

She said the company had invested heavily in rebuilding and upgrading the electricity network serving Aba, including replacing old substations and installing new infrastructure to ensure that industrial customers received stable and quality power.

Nnaji said the project had also changed the behaviour of consumers who now have greater confidence that electricity would be available when they needed it.

She recalled that businesses in Aba had suffered for years from inadequate electricity supply and were forced to rely heavily on generators to remain operational.

The Geometric Power executive said the Afreximbank intervention therefore had an impact beyond the power plant itself, because it helped unlock economic activities that depend on reliable electricity.

She said the project was designed with expansion in mind, noting that the gas pipeline supplying the plant was built to support generation of up to 500 megawatts within the area.

This, she said, would allow Geometric Power to expand generation as demand increases and potentially supply electricity to other parts of the Southeast and South-South.

Nnaji said the success of the Aba project demonstrated the role that African financial institutions could play in financing infrastructure projects that have significant economic and social impact.

She categorically stated that Afreximbank’s funding enabled the company to complete and commission the project.

She said the bank’s willingness to support the project despite the difficulties surrounding it showed the importance of development finance institutions in funding projects that commercial banks might consider too risky.

Nnaji said the Geometric experience could provide a template for financing similar integrated power projects in other industrial cities across Nigeria.

She said such projects could succeed where there were commercially viable customers, reliable fuel supply, appropriate regulatory arrangements and long-term financing.

“We have been the guinea pig for the power sector. Anybody else coming to replicate this model, by God’s grace, would never go through one-tenth of what we have gone through in terms of challenges,” she said.

Nnaji said Geometric Power was now exploring additional sources of energy, including solar and waste-to-power, to complement its gas-fired generation and strengthen the reliability of electricity supply.

She stressed that the ultimate benefit of the investment was not only the megawatts generated, but the businesses, jobs and economic activities that reliable electricity could support.

With the project now operational and positioned for expansion, the $50 million Afreximbank intervention has effectively moved the Aba power project from a long-delayed infrastructure investment to an operating power asset with plans for much higher generation capacity.