Recall that The presidential candidate of the Labour Party, Peter Obi had on June 14 embarked on a three-day trip to Egypt where he understudied the country’s power, education, planning and finance sectors.
Peter Obi, has revealed his plans to apply the knowledge gathered from his trip to Egypt if elected as Nigeria’s President in 2023.
He was hailed by his supporters for embarking on the trip to Egypt, while some others bashed the LP presidential candidate, saying it was too late to make such moves.
Appearing during an interview on Channels Television’s Politics Today, he shared some of the lessons shared from the visit to the North African country.
The presidential hopeful said South Africa and Egypt each produce over 50,000 megawatts of electricity, despite not being as populated as Nigeria.
According to him, Africa’s most populous country has the ability to generate, transmit and distribute 15,000 megawatts of electricity within a four-year period for any serious government.
“I go to where people have done the right thing to learn. Egypt, Vietnam and India have deployed the fastest electricity programme in the past five years,” he said.
“The experience of Egypt I decided to go and learn. I visited the power plant to see what they were able to do within those five years. I visited the company that executed the project, had a very useful meeting, and visited the Power Holding Company of Egypt and other agencies involved to learn what they did.
“Egypt moved their power generation, transmission and distribution from about 20,000 to over 55,000 (megawatt of electricity) today within five years. In a country like ours of 200 million people generating only about 4,000 megawatts when the second biggest economy in Africa – South Africa – is generating over 50,000 and Egypt is generating over 50,000.”
Electricity supply is a major challenge for Nigeria as it currently generates about 6,000 megawatts for the huge population of about 200 million people.