Why Siemens Power deal is a Scam.

Presidential Power Initiative (PPI) – Siemens Advertised to Nigeria from 7,000MW to 11,000MW: The Fallacy.

Supply

1. 10X60MVA mobile substations
2. 7X60MVA Spare Transformers
3. 3X100MVA Spare Transformers

The phase 1 is upgrading in seven substation.

1. Upgrade of 132kV and 330kV in Katempe – Replacement of 2X60MVA with 1X150MVA
2. Upgrade of 132kV at Apo – Addition of 1X100MVA
3. Upgrade of konan Dangora 132kV SS – Addition 1X 100MVA
4. Upgrade of Talata Mafara 132kV- Addition 1X60MVA
5. Update of Kukuwaba 132kV SS – 2X100MVA
6. Upgrade of Onitsha 132kV- 1X60MVA
7. Upgrade of Mando SS- Addition of 150MVA, 1X60MVA

This is the scope of the so called Siemens Project Phase 1 that will take Nigeria from 7,000MW to 11,000MW capacity. Is this not madness? Can this project add 1GW to the grid?

All the political parties and their candidates including Peter Obi don’t understand the power sector and they have failed to talk to experts.

Siemens project is nothing but fraud. Some fraudulent members of PMB administration are trying to give their fraudulent Siemens project capacities to be added by TREP supported by the World Bank, African Development Bank and JICA.

They have however succeeded in distracting Management Of TCN from TREP that will increase the capacity of the company. Instead of implementing TREP whose was competed 3 years ago the government is focusing on Siemens project that has no studies 3 years after it was conceived. In addition:

1. They are forcing Nigeria to buy Siemens equipments using expensive commercial bank loans when it still have leverage to take cheap loan from multilateral development banks and other multilateral donors.
2. They are investing expensive German commercial bank loan into discos with out any form of agreement between the discos owners and government. Such investment like the government did with NIPP injection substations which became free assets to the discos owners. This is because it did not add anything to the government stake in the discos. What happen to the performance contract between Discos and BPE?
3. The costly Siemens project will further compound the liquidity crisis of the Nigeria Power Sector initially created created by expensive and short term commercial loan which the owners of discos took from Nigerians banks to buy the assets.
4. Those who conceived the Siemens have not told Nigerians how the price was determined since the Siemens project is a complete violation of public procurement Act.
5. The Egypt model being sitted as justification is different from Nigerians case. Eqyptian have infrastructure in transmission and distribution what the Siemens project added to them was generation capacity. Their electricity sector was not also privatized.

Dr UG Mohammed
Former MD TCN