PHCN requires N4.2bn to upgrade facilities in four States

By  Peter Duru, Makurdi
Power Holding Company of Nigeria, PHCN, has disclosed that it would require the sum of N4.2billion to upgrade its customers’ electricity meters in four states comprising, Benue, Plateau, Gombe and Bauchi states which make up the Jos zonal office.

The Chief Executive Officer, Jos Electricity Distribution Company Mrs. Ngozi Osuhor who disclosed this yesterday in Makurdi where she commissioned newly constructed customer care offices in two business districts of the company and a new 7.5MVA electricity transformer in Otukpo said when installed, the new electricity meters would check the overload and failure of transformers among others.

Mrs. Osuhor who attributed the incessant power outages in the country to aged distribution network and obsolete working equipment added that the company is gradually overcoming the challenge with government’s renewed intervention in the sector.

She said, “We had allowed this decay in the sector over a long time. It will be inhuman to think that transformation will take place very fast.

The system is coming back and Government is determined to ensure that the system works. There would be light at the end of the dark tunnel”, she stated optimistically.
While commissioning the new 7.5MVA power transformer to complement the existing one in Otupko town, Mrs. Osuhor said the new plant would effectively address the challenge of power outages witnessed in the town especially at peakperiods.

In their separate remarks, the PHCN Business Managers in charge of Makurdi and Otukpo towns, John Emeruwa and Roland Orisakwe lauded the ongoing reforms in the PHCN stressing that in no distance time the issue of power outages in the country would be a thing of the past in the country.

The Business Managers noted that the policies and programmes of action of the Ministry of Power and the Jos Electricity Distribution Company has galvanized speedy transformation inn the sector that would soon usher in an era of uninterruptible electricity supply in the country.