By Celestine Okafor (Editor-in-Chief) and Nnanna Kalu (Abia State Correspondent, in Umuahia)
As the clock ticks towards the formal inaguration of both the 188 megawatt Geometric Power and the 181 megawatt Independent Aba Power Limited by President Bola Ahmed Tinubu on Monday, a team of top security officers and Abia State government officials have been visiting the power plants site.
The security and sundry inspection tour team was led by the Group Managing Director of Geometric Power and Aba Power Limited, Mrs Agatha Nnaji.
The inspection tour, NIGERIAN NEWSLEADER Newspaper learnt, was part of the last minute measures to ensure that things were in proper place and that the security of the area is full proof ahead of the arrival of President Tinubu in Aba on Monday for the commissioning of the two thermal power plants.
The over $800 million dollar twin thermal power plants (Geometric Power and Aba Power Limited) are humongous energy generation and supply projects independently embarked upon a few years ago by the US trained globally renowned robotics and energy expert, Professor Barth Nnaji, who is currently the Executive Chairman of the power organisation.
The new integrated power facilities presently managed by an electricity expert, Mr Ben Caven, includes a 27-kilometre natural gas pipelines stretching from Owaza in Ukwa west LGA in Abia State to the Osisioma Industrial Layout in Aba. The plants also has an installed 150,000 kilometres of cables and wires, four new power substations and refurbished three others inherited from the defunct Power Holding Company of Nigeria (PHCN).
The Geometric Power Limited tubular poles mounted in Aba and its environs have been described as unprecedent in the entire African continent. This magnitude of private power plant, according to another energy expert, Patrick Umeh, can only be found in big Japanese and American cities like Tokyo and San Francisco in California.
The tubular poles of the Geometric Power facilities are indeed very tall and are actually about 10 meters deep. This means that in the unlikely event of a natural disaster like earthquake in Aba or the environs, Aba Power and the Geometric Group are said to be able to supply electricity to its numerous customers.
The birth of Geometric Power and Aba Power plants started in 2004 when the former President of the World Bank, Dr James Wolfensohn and Nigeria's former Minister of Finance and current President of the World Trade Organisation (WTO), Dr Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, approached Africa's foremost eminent geometric scientist and scholar, Professor Barth Nnaji and urged him to build an independent power facility that will supply electrical energy to the indigenous industrial hub emerging in Aba, the industrial and commercial nerve centre of the South East, Nigeria.
Nnaji immediately took up the challenge, having successfully led a team of Nigerian Engineers to build in Abuja from the year 2000 to 2001, a 22 megawatt Abuja Emergency Power Plant which supplied uninterrupted power to critical places like the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation Company (NNPC), the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) headquarters, the Aso Rock Presidential Villa and the entire Central Business District, Abuja.
The new power plants, according to Chief Alphonsus Udeigbo, President-General of the 22,000-member Aba Landlords Protection and Development Association (ALPANDA), will, no doubt, mark a watershed in private power generation and supply in Nigeria. NNL.
