The Country Representative of the United Nation’s Industrial Development Organisation, UNIDO, Mr. Patrick Kormawa, yesterday, disclosed that the World Bank had contributed about $200 million to the development of power sector in Nigeria.
Mr. Kormawa, who spoke on the sideline of the on-going inaugural conference on National Council of Power, NCOP, in Abuja told journalists that UINDO was interested in devolvement of sustainable power sector in Nigeria.
Commending the Federal Government for initiating the conference on power, Kormawa said that “development partners are interested on power sector in Nigeria because it is a very important variable in economic development and for job creations.
The conference, he said, would strengthen partnership among all the key stakeholders on power such as Federal, state and local governments. He said that the conference would also help to bring development partners on round-table with other stakeholders and help to galvanise activities in such a way that investors would have more confidence in the Nigerian power development.
He said: “Private sector is investing huge amount of money in power to resuscitate a once abandoned sector of the economy. It requires the corporation of every stakeholder to ensure success is achieved.
“When you have partnership built around all the stakeholders it will facilitate power distribution work together to harness resources available that can be used to provide power.”
He also that Nigeria had abundant resources both in renewable and other energy sources that could easily be developed for generation of power, maintaining that “UINDO is interested in power because without it, industrialisation becomes a mirage.”
He mentioned some of the development partners that have been synergising with the Nigerian government to turn around the epileptic power supply in Nigeria.
UNIDO boss said that during the process of the last privatisation in power sector, many of these development partners joined hands with the government in providing technical assistance and also linked the government with potential investors in power.
