By Sunday John
President Muhammadu Buhari on Thursday inaugurated the 330/132/33KV sub-station at Akurba community, a suburb of Lafia, Nasarawa State.
The power sub-station was part of the projects marked out for inauguration by the president during his two-day official visit to Nasarawa State.The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that the president was accompanied by Gov. Abdullahi Sule of Nasarawa State, Gov. Yahaya Bello of Kogi, Gov. Simon Lalong of Plateau and Gov. Atiku Bagudu of Kebbi.Others were Minister of Power, Abubakar Aliyu, Minister of Justice, Abubakar Malami, Minister of Science and Technology, Ogbonnaye Onu and Mohammed Abdullahi, Minister of State, Science and Technology.Members of National and State House of Assembly from Nasarawa State also accompanied the president to the occasion.Speaking to newsmen after the inauguration, Abubakar Aliyu, Minister of Power, said that the project was one of the legacy projects of the president in the state.
The minister said that the project, which began in 2017, had been completed and the people of the state were already benefiting from it.He listed some benefits of the project to include rapid growth in the socio-economic activities by way of attracting foreign investors who will create jobs.
He said that small scale businesses such as hairdressing, barbershop, welding and tailoring were already benefiting from the quality electricity from the sub-station since it began operation few months ago.Aliyu added that with the inauguration, Nasarawa State has now become a centre of electricity distribution.On the issue of estimated billing, the minister said that measures had been put in place to tackle it by ensuring that every consumer is metered.He explained that under the mass metering initiative of the federal government, more than one million people were metered and more than four million meters were available for distribution in the second phase of the programme.“The plan of the government is to make sure that every electricity consumer is metered so as to permanently tackle the problems associated with estimated billing system. “
When everyone has a meter, every customer is a liberty to waste his electricity or control it”. The minister assured the public that the Akurba power sub-station and other projects by the federal government would be fully utilised.(NAN)
