The Federal Ministry of Water Resources has confirmed that negotiations on full concession of 30MW Gurara Power Plant in Kaduna State are currently being made with private investors with a view to optimizing its operations.
Giving this hint yesterday in Abuja, the Director, Water Supply and Public Private Partnership (PPP) in the ministry, Engr. Benson Ajisegiri, said that the dam would enhance power supply in the northwest part of the country and also provide sustainable and cost-effective potable water supply to the Federal Capital Territory.
According to him, the dam also has 1,800 hectares of irrigation land that has been leased to 11 commercial farmers and individuals, especially retirees who were considered to empower them for agricultural activities.
He said: ‘‘The dam is of utmost importance to the Federal Government, it will also provide electricity to the industrial area of Kaduna so that they can revive the industries there.
‘‘We are just about concluding that, by the time it comes up, you will discover that it can send power to that place and it will improve more industrial activities in Kaduna leading to more employment and so many things”, Engr Ajisegiri added.
He explained further that the concession model adopted would enable a concessionaire to take custody of the project for a specific time as determined by the financial analysis.
Engr. Ajisegiri pointed out that the concessionaire would be responsible for generating hydro power and connecting it to the national power transmission networks for distribution by the Transmission Company of Nigeria (TCN) to Distribution Companies (Discos).
This is even as he hinted that the ministry was negotiating with the preferred and reserved bidders in line with the guidelines of the Infrastructure Concession Regulatory Commission (ICRC).
Explaining that the rule in the guidelines of ICRC stipulate that a Transaction Adviser should be involved in the processes, the water resource management expert said that the shortlisted firms for the full concession of the dam had been given their Request for Proposal and analyses in choosing the preferred and reserved bidder.
According to him, the concession processes are being spearheaded by the Project Delivery Team, comprising the ICRC, Ministries of Water Resources, Environment, Power, Works and Housing, Nigeria Electricity Regulation Commission (NERC) and Nigerian Bulk Electricity Trading Company (NBETC).
It would be recalled that the Minister of Water Resources, Suleiman Adamu, said recently that the ministry had prioritised the 116 uncompleted or abandoned major projects across the country with a view to reactivating them and achieving their objectives.
Specifically, he promised that the ministry would deploy all necessary resources needed to complete the projects and commissioning the high and medium priority water projects from 2016 to 2019.
The minister clarified: “We have concluded a Technical Audit and prioritised the hitherto uncompleted or abandoned 116 major projects that I met in the ministry. We are deploying most of our resources towards completing and commissioning all the high and medium priority projects from 2016 – 2019.
‘‘The dam was designed and constructed with the main purpose of supplying water to the Lower Usuma Dam to meet the demand for water”, Adamu added.
The Gurara dam, which is located about 75 kilometres from the Abuja and with a crest of 3.2 kilometres in length, maximum height of 54m, and a reservoir capacity of 880MCM, has multi-purpose hydro-power generation, irrigation, farming, tourism development, and fishery amenities
