Engr. Saheed Adeyemi Oladele (SAO) on Sunday charged Oyo State Governor, Engr Seyi Makinde to take advantage of the new electricity act bill to improve power in the state by making good use of the many unused dams in the state generate electricity using hydro power plants.
Engr Oladele made this statement when he featured on Periscope on Jamz FM 101.5 with Ambassador Afolabi Olayemi, where he highlighted the possible ways for Oyo State to generate their own electricity with the existing water bodies and infrastructure that will require minimum civil infrastructure upgrade to convert to fully functional hydro power plants.
“I see this administration as one that is willing to drive a good economic agenda in the country. We also want to take advantage of the new electricity act bill to improve power in the economy. I’m not waiting till 2027, we urge the state governor to take this huge opportunity.
“We have 22 dams that have not been used like Ikere George Dam, Ogun Osun River Basin, Ofiki Dams etc. We have done our feasibility studies, so there are several ways we can generate electricity, but we have to take advantage of the resources available, we can do solar, but we have 3 water bodies with existing infrastructure that will require minimum civil infrastructure upgrade to convert to fully functional hydro power plants. This electricity act bill has given us the opportunity to have a distributed power system, meaning that we can isolate power to each locality.
“We have ways to do that, we can generate electricity and transmit to the national grid or generate electricity and distribute directly to the locality.” Engr Oladele said.
Engr SAO also laid emphasis on the deplorable state of roads leading to Ibarapa zones. He stressed that subsequent governments have failed to provide lasting roads to promote business and ease of transportation to the zone.
“Ibarapa have long been denied good infrastructural development in Oyo State, the roads are in deplorable states, there are no plans for drainage. The state of the road is frustrating businesses. We also need power to drive the economy in the zone.
“From our statistics, Ibarapa has about 300,000 people with about 150,000 households, they will need about 60KWatt usage per month that will need about 14KMW of electricity.
“Imagine the huge monthly allocation from the Federal Government, we can use the arable lands to turn Ibarapa to an agric hub in the nation.
“The local government autonomy is also a big milestone and whoever is against that is anti-development. States are supposed to be complimenting the efforts of the local government with oversight functions of LG fund. States are even required to give money to the local governments.” Engr SAO concluded.
