Benue govt to enact electricity law

To control the state's energy industry, the Benue State Government claims to be working on passing an electrical law.

In an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria on Sunday in Makurdi, Mr. Omale Omale, the Commissioner for Transportation, Renewable Energy, and Power, revealed this. 

According to Omale, the Ministry of Justice is now reviewing a draft of the bill before presenting it to the state executive council. 

As soon as the executive council gave its approval, the commissioner said, the bill would be forwarded to the House of Assembly as an executive bill.

“The law will address the energy needs in unserved and underserved communities in the state.

“There are some communities that don’t have electricity infrastructure networks, which represent the unserved group, while there are others with the infrastructure but don’t get regular electricity.

“As a ministry, we know the energy needs of all Benue people, and we are working on it,” he said.

According to Omale, states can now participate in the energy market and produce, distribute, and control electricity inside their borders according to the new Electricity Act. A 67-year-old restaurant owner named Mrs. 

Jennifer Tema told NAN that her business had suffered greatly as a result of the frequent outages of the national grid. 

Tema claimed that the frequent power outages had caused her to record losses of millions of Naira on perishable products.

“In recent times, we have witnessed a bit of steady power supply, but this issue of the national grid has caused me a lot of damage.

“My generator cannot take more than two freezers at a time. I lost over N2 million in the recent power outage. This is really affecting my business.

“I just hope that the state government will rise to the occasion and get alternative energy sources for us to mitigate these losses,” she said.

Source