How community protests stalled completion of 700mw Zungeru power project, Director tells Senate

THE Project Director of the Zungeru Hydroelectric Power Project, Dr
Johnson Adewumi has disclosed that community action around the $1.2
billion project has pushed forward its completion date by two years.

Dr Adewumi, who told the Senate Committee on Power, Steel Development
and Metarllurgy headed by Senator Enyinnaya Abaribe during an
oversight visit of the plant said that youths in the Zungeru area have
orchestrated lots of community action against the project in the past
three years.

He said that the expatriates and Nigerian staff  have been subjected
to kidnappings, gun attacks, blockade of roads and other forms of
violence in 2015, 2016 and 2017 by the local communities in a bid to
extract compensations from the Federal Government.

He also asked the Senate to intervene frontally to ensure that the
local community is briefed on the benefits they stand to derive from
the 700megawatts power project.

The project, which was flagged off in 2013 by former President
Goodluck Jonathan with a $1.2 billion loan from China Eximm Bank was
originally scheduled for completion in 48 months. Which should have
terminated in December 2017.

But the Director said during a tour by the Senate Committee that the
project is now scheduled to be completed in 2019 following series of
security incidences.

He said that the Plant, which already harbours some 2,000 workers
would at its peak account for close to 4,000 persons.

He said: “Unfortunately, these young boys are being misguided. I told
you that this project will last 80 years or more and more things would
be added. Senator Aduda can attest. There was nothing here when we
started. When we were doing survey here we were sleeping under the
tents.

“Now this place has become a thriving community. In fact, for the state
government the IGR that is coming from the PAYE taxes ihas become
something for them.

“If this project should come on stream, this is the place where the
work is. Some of the boys are not being told the job is important.
They should allow the job to go on and get opportunities to be
trained. Some of them just carry stick and stay on the road disturbing
everything. Some of them when they get the money they go on to buy
Okada. Let us tell them that that is not important. It is not about
compensation.

“When the Minister of Power came here I told him we are going to have
11bn litres of water stored here. The land from here to Mokwa is good
for irrigation. That is the kind of thing we should be talking about.
The state government can also build its projects around here.

“There are more benefits that will come but they are now delaying.
When you delay if for two years, you create more problems.”

Senator Abaribe, who assured the Director and the Chinese Expatriates
that their fears concerning security have been taken into
consideration said that the National Assembly has provided the sum of
N1.1 billion for payment of compensation(crops)  and another N215
million as general compensation for the communities impacted by the
project.

He said: I took time last week, knowing that we were coming for this
site visit to speak with the Permanent Secretary, Ministry of Power
and he assured me that for this project, whatever needed to be signed
has been and that all that is remaining is for things to come from the
Ministry of Finance.”

He assured the contractors that the Senate would continuously liaise
with all stakeholders to stop the disruption of operations in the
site.