The Chairman of Heirs Holdings, Tony Elumelu says the group “has the ambition to generate at least a quarter of Nigeria’s power consumption needs in the next five years.” Heirs Holdings’ interests in the power sector include Transcorp Ughelli Power, a gas-fired, thermal power
generating plant which was acquired under the privatisation of Nigeria’s power sector.
Elumelu, who is to deliver the keynote address at this year’s West African Power Industry Convention (WAPIC) to be held in Lagos from 18-19 November, stated that he is committed to playing to a leading role in turning around Nigeria’s power fortunes.
The WAPIC high-level energy conference and expo, in its 11th edition, will gather government, utilities, consultants and investors to discuss the challenges of local markets, capacity building and investment.
“The power industry is a catalytic sector and the development of our country and our continent cannot happen without fixing it”, Elumelu said in a statement sent to Ventures Africa.
He described the USA’s Power Africa Initiative as “an amazing opportunity to democratize access to power for Africans” pointing to Heirs Holdings’ $2.5 billion investment as an evidence of his commitment and a reflection of how “excited” he is about it.
We felt more strongly than ever, the need to help power Africa”, Elumelu enthused, before explaining how Heirs Holdings, already dominating sectors like tourism with the Transcorp brand of hotels, plans to lead in the power sector.
“Our experience so far at Ughelli power plant is testimony to the size of the opportunity; our amazing team has taken that plant from 150MW capacity when we took over in November 2013, to 450MW today; we expect it to increase 700MW by October and to achieve 1000MW by the second quarter of 2015. At that rate, we’ll be contributing 20 per cent of Nigeria’s total power generation.”
Furthermore, he says they are working on a greenfield project that will expand the capacity of Ughelli by an additional 1000MW in the next three to five years and they have signed an MOU with GE and Symbion Power to facilitate this.
However, despite the achievements and ambitions of Heirs Holdings, Tony Elumelu still faces great challenges in Nigeria’s problem ridden power sector. Fortunately though, the former the CEO of United Bank of Africa understands these challenges.
Elumelu lamented that “In Nigeria, one of the biggest challenges to power generation is transmission and in fact, while Ughelli Power Plant generated at full capacity for the first time in July, we’ve been asked to scale down generation because of the outdated transmission systems; for every 100MW generated and sent to transmission companies, 40 per cent is lost, in part because of this infrastructure issue.”
The Heirs Holdings’ boss mentions regulation as another challenge though states that its not as serious as the former. “It is an issue within the sector that if addressed, has the potential to speed sector growth exponentially”, he explained. “We need pragmatic regulation that recognizes that within Nigeria, the sector is nascent and so policies must be designed to encourage growth. In fairness, the federal government is confronting these challenges head on.”
During his keynote address at WAPIC, Tony Elumelu says he will “discuss the opportunities that I have discovered in the power space and the efforts of African power sector leaders through the West African Energy Leaders Forum to improve access to electricity across West Africa.”
The event is organised by Spintelligent, leading Cape Town-based trade exhibition and conference organiser, and the African office of Clarion Events Ltd in the UK.
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