This, he explained, would be adequate for the needs of individual users and large manufacturing industries, which currently generate their own electricity at great costs.
Jonathan said this on Wednesday during a meeting with the former British Prime Minister, Mr. Tony Blair, and the Chief Executive Officer, JP Morgan Bank of the United States, Mr. Jamie Dimon.
According to him, from April, next year, the country will be generating enough electricity for homes, offices and commercial enterprises.
The President said that the Federal Government was also tackling the challenges in the area of power transmission.
He noted that the government intended to quickly construct a new national power transmission super-grid to replace the existing grid, which could no longer meet the nation’s needs.
The President told Blair and Dimon that Nigeria would welcome support from international financial organisations and global banks.
The support, he said, could be in the form of long-term financing of the super-grid project, which he said was critical to stable power supply in the country.
Jonathan said that his administration’s priority was to boost power supply in the country.
He said that the government believed that adequate and stable power supply would have a beneficial impact on employment generation and economic production.
The President also briefed the visitors on his administration’s efforts to boost agricultural production through large-scale commercial farming.
Blair said that there was a huge amount of goodwill in the international community on the efforts of the President to achieve rapid socio-economic development of the country.
The former prime minister said that the decision by JP Morgan, one of the world’s largest banks to upgrade its office in Nigeria to a full-scale branch, was a vote of confidence in Nigeria and the Jonathan administration.
Also on Wednesday, the President received the Foreign Minister of the Russian Federation, Mr. Sergey Lavrov.
The minister was in Abuja for the implementation of bilateral agreements signed during the Russian President, Mr. Dmitry Medvedev’s visit to Nigeria last year.
The President assured the minister that his administration would do all it could to facilitate the implementation of the agreements and the expansion of areas of economic cooperation between Nigeria and the Russian Federation.
Lavrov had earlier told the President that Russia was very keen on “enriching” its relations with Nigeria through large-scale economic projects.
Source:http://www.punchng.com/Articl.aspx?theartic=Art201011183162356
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