SAD!!! Family Of Six Killed By Generator Fume

It's so sad that useful and innocent lives are wasted in Nigeria by easily avoidable events. A family of six have lost their lives to generator fumes in Boji Boji Owa community in Ika South LGA of Delta State.

Leadership reports that the incident happened on Friday, June 13 after the the family forgot to put off the generator after watching a football match.

It was reliably gathered that the generator set popularly called “I pass my neighbour” was left working inside their room which later suffocated the victims because their room windows were locked inside, preventing the smoke of the generator from leaving the room.

Recounting what happened, the father of the victims who is a businessman said, they had bought fuel to watch the football match after which he and his wife went to bed, forgetting to put off the generating set.

He said, "The next morning, my daughter who is the younger sister of the victims knocked on the door without anybody opening it. The door was later forced opened where the six family members were found dead."

Lamenting the loss of his children, the businessman said, out of eight children that his wife bore for him, he is now left with only two.

According to him, they later discovered that the children did not only use it to watch football but to watch Nigerian movie after the football match.

A nurse in the vicinity who pleaded anonymity said she had attempted to administer treatment to the victims but later discovered that they were completely dead.

The police authorities in the area said the deceased had been taken to the hospital mortuary for proper investigation.

culled

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Minister Blames Nigeria’s Darkness On Evil Spirit

In a rather shocking admission on the cause of Nigeria’s incessant power outage, the minister of state for power, Hajiya Zainab Kuchi yesterday, told a group of South African investors that evil spirits were preventing the country from achieving sustainable electricity supply.

While addressing members of the African National Congress (ANC), the South African Ruling Party, which was on a working visit to the country in her Abuja office, the minister said, “We must resolve to jointly exorcise the evil spirit behind this darkness and allow this nation take its pride of peace in the comity of Nations.”

The minister in a statement by the Deputy Director/Head of Press of the ministry, Greyne Anosike, said, “Nigeria needs help, any nation that loves Nigeria must collaborate with it now to resolve her energy crisis…We are getting irritatingly slow.”

She told the delegation that Nigeria has a structured response to her power challenges with a Roadmap it is implementing with care and diligence and asked them to study the power sector roadmap and come up with their specific area of interest, assuring that there were a lot of gaps to be filled in the sector.

The Minister said that work had reached various stages of completion in rehabilitating some of the moribund power stations scattered across the country pointing out that, the revival of the abandoned power projects was critical in lifting the sector as billions of funds had been sunk into them.

While expressing confidence in the present administration’s determination to break the jinx in the power sector, the minister said, “It would amount to lavish diseconomy to embark on new project and abandon the old ones in which huge tax payers resources had been sunk.”

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Ministry targets N22.5b monthly revenue from PHCN

THE Minister of Power, Prof. Barth Nnaji, has directed Power Holding Company of Nigeria’s (PHCN) executives, responsible for revenue mobilisation to work out strategies that will result in monthly revenue of at least N22.5 billion.

This, he disclosed, is the irreducible minimum, which must be generated to ensure regular settlement of PHCN’s obligations to power and gas suppliers like Shell, Agip and AES.

The monthly PHCN revenue, which was N11.8 billion when Nnaji assumed office last July, moved up to N15.6 billion in December, but declined to N12.8 billion in January following the general strike against the removal of petrol subsidy.

Stating this at a meeting in his office at the weekend with top ministry and PHCN executives, in Abuja, Nnaji told the executives to search for new and creative ways to recover the N100 billion owed PHCN by customers across the country, dispelling the notion that the government debt is the cause of the debt crisis.

According to him, "even when we generate N22.5 billion monthly, it will still not be big enough for our maintenance and operations, but enough for only the payment of gas and power supplies, as well as, for the wage bill, which has ballooned since we approved last June a 50 per cent increase in salary as part of the incentive package for the entire 50,000 workforce.

“What the government and all its agencies in the country owe is about only 20 per cent of the debt stock. Therefore, there must be a paradigm shift in the way we have been going about our revenue business, including the deployment of modern technology,” he added.

It is understood that the PHCN is owing Agip N60 billion for its power plant at Okpai in Delta State, which produces 470Megawatts, Shell $78 million for its power plant which generates 561MW at Afam in the Rivers State, Nigerian Gas Company N10 billion for 700 million standard cubic of natural gas, National Integrated Power Project N6 billion for power supplied from its stations in Sapele in Delta State and Olorunsogo in Ogun State, and Ibom Power N300m for the 90MW generated from its plant at Ikot Abasi in Akwa Ibom State.

He asked the PHCN Market Operators to find out companies indebted to PHCN, which are still in operation and the possibility of debt discountenance.

“You may also have to consider the question of hiring professional debt collectors,” he added.

The minister has also ordered an emergency retreat for the 11 distribution companies created out of the state-owned power utility to help create a paradigm shift.

The meeting, mandatory for chief executives and marketing chiefs of the 11 distribution companies, will hold in Lagos, this weekend, with officials of the Presidential Task Force on Power in attendance.

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Borno to establish 20 megawatts solar power project

PIQUED by the epileptic power supply from the Power Holding Company of Nigeria (PHCN), the Borno State government is to establish 20 megawatts solar Independent Power Project (IPP) in meeting the electricity requirements provided by the abundant, but untapped solar energy from the northern desert.

The IPP is to be built and completed by a German firm before the end of this year.

These were made known at the weekend by Governor Kashim Shettima at the Government House, Maiduguri, while he received a forum of All Nigeria People’s Party (ANPP) chairmen from the six geo-political zones.

He however, lamented that the PHCN supplies a daily five megawatts of electricity to the state, which had been grossly inadequate for over a decade to meet industrial and domestic requirements of the state. .

Shettima said: “The state government will engage in talks with the German firm with the aim of signing a memorandum of understanding (MOU) on the construction of a solar plant to generate electricity for the state.”

He said that government took the decision on IPP, because electricity supplied to the state by the PHCN was grossly inadequate meet people’s requirements for electricity.

He explained that his administration placed high premium on power, because of its drive for industrial revolution in the state, noting that there could be no industrialisation without a sustained and reliable power generation and supply.

Special Adviser to the governor on Media and Communication, Mr. Isa Umar Gusau said that the meeting of the ANPP chairmen was a follow up to the governor’s trip to Germany in October last year.

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