Kwara varsity, firm sign $150m power project MoU

Success Nwogu, Ilorin

The Vice-Chancellor, Kwara State University, Malete, Prof. AbdulRasheed Na’Allah; and the boss of the KWASU Renewable Power Generation Project, Mr. Teslim Balogun, on Friday said the institution planned to generate 100 megawatts of power.

Na’Allah said it was imperative for tertiary institutions in Nigeria to conduct research and come up with solutions to the nation’s power problem.

He alleged that the administrations of Chief Olusegun Obasanjo; late Umaru Yar’Adua and Dr. Goodluck Jonathan invested wrongly billions of naira in power projects across the country.

He added that it was sad and worrisome that after such huge investments, Nigeria’s power challenge had remained.

The vice-chancellor spoke on the sidelines of the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding for a $150m power project that will deliver 100MW between KWASU and the Africa Growth and Energy Solutions, United Kingdom Plc, in Ilorin, the Kwara State capital.

While Na’Allah signed for KWASU; the Project Director, Solar Era, AGES, Mr. Royston Dawkins, signed for his company.

The VC stated that KWASU signed the partnership agreement with AGES to explore relationship so as to address energy crisis.

He canvassed huge investments in solar and renewable energy as a potent strategy to solving the nation’s power challenges and called on the federal and Kwara State governments to support the university’s initiative on energy provision.

Dawkins said decentralisation of power generation and distribution would improve efficiency.

Balogun, on his part, stated that for the past 20 years, millions of dollars had been pumped into power generation without achieving much success.

He explained that the KWASU model could be replicated across the nation by other universities.

Balogun said, “When you generate, for instance, 1,000 megawatts, you need to transmit it to a particular place for people to access power. While transmitting, Nigeria actually loses 50 per cent of the power; so 1,000 megawatts becomes 500MW. When you get to the distribution companies, some areas do not even have transformers in Nigeria. Some people are not even connected to the grid at all.

“In fact, more than half are not connected. You have a lot of sabotage that have been happening in many areas of electricity generation and transmission in Nigeria. You cannot centralise power distribution. Let us say KWASU is generating 100MW, the whole of Ilorin will benefit from that.

“Imagine if the 129 universities in the country all generated 100MW each, we will have 12,900MW from the universities alone not to talk of state and federal interventions.”

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