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Barkindo said that the resumption of gas supply to the countries was because domestic gas supply had improved, hinting also that supply to Ghana was initially stopped to satisfy local demand.

The NNPC GMD, who was speaking to journalists on the sidelines of a meeting organised by the corporation titled, "Stakeholders' forum on gas to power: Achieving alignment for delivering gas to power in Nigeria," said, "Today, we have started supplying the West African Gas Pipeline, which we had to shut down in order to divert the gas for domestic utilisation."

He added that the reason for the resumption of supply was "Because power generation has started to go up."

The West African Gas Pipeline Company, the firm delivering Nigeria's gas to Ghana, had in a statement issued in November 2009, said, "WAPco, last April delivered its first natural gas supply to VRA's Takoradi Thermal Plant at Aboadze near Takoradi, under an interim gas supply arrangement.

"This initial supply enabled VRA to commission one of its 100 megawatts' turbines and generate power in Ghana from natural gas.

"Since May 2009, however, WAPCo has not received gas from N-Gas Limited for further delivery to VRA due to vandalism of gas supply pipelines in the Niger Delta region, several kilometres upstream of the WAGP connection to the Nigerian Gas Company's Escravos-Lagos Pipeline system."

Corroborating Barkindo's statement on increased power generation , the Executive Director, Operations, Power Holding Company of Nigeria, Mr. John Ayodele, who was also speaking on the sidelines of the conference in Lagos, said power generation was 3,558 megawatts on Monday morning and could climb to 3,700MW by Tuesday morning.

Also, Barkindo, had, in a presentation at the opening ceremony of the event, explained reasons why the oil industry could not achieve the 1.2 billion standard cubic feet of gas- domestic -gas- target agreed between it and government in 2008 and which government provided adequate funds for.in 2008 and 2009 budgets.

According to him, although the industry achieved 885 million standard cubic feet, it fell short of the target beacuse of the security situation in the Niger Delta, which was poor between 2008 and 2009 and operational challenges in the various oil producing companies.

Barkindo said, " The 1.2 billion scfd, domestic gas supply obligation was distributed among Joint Venture companies, including the NNPC and some of the Production Sharing Contracts' operators like Pan Ocean. In each of the companies, they had internal challenges. Now, this meeting that we convened will give us the opportunity to jointly review and address these challenges in order to come out with a joint programme of action, that is realistic, flexible and will enable us, not only to achieve the missed target but also to bring forward the projects which are being funded in the 2010 budget."

He stated that the outcome of the conference would be presented to Acting President Goodluck Jonathan

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A consortium involving China Unicom bid $2.5 billion on Tuesday for the former state telecoms monopoly in Nigeria, one of the world's fastest growing markets, the privatization body said.

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The National Council on Privatization said New Generation Telecommunications Ltd. had become the preferred bidder for Nitel, which Nigeria has struggled to sell since liberalization in 2001 made it uncompetitive against rivals.

The privatization body said the consortium included China Unicom (Hong Kong) Limited, Minerva Group of Dubai and local company GiCell Wireless Limited. Their precise holdings in the consortium were not immediately available.

China, Africa's biggest trading partner, has invested billions of dollars in the continent in recent years, going far beyond its initial emphasis on mineral extraction.

Nigeria invited expressions of interest in July for a minimum of a 75 percent stake in the Nitel conglomerate or a stake in one or several of its components, including mobile arm MTEL, the South Atlantic Terminal underwater cable (SAT-3) and its domestic fixed line network.

After the bid is approved by the privatization council, the group will have 10 days to pay 30 percent of the purchase price and a further 50 days to pay the rest. The reserve bidder was Omen International Ltd (BVI) with a bid of $956 million.

"We will pay within the stipulated time. We did not make a hypothetical offer," said Abubakar Usman from New Generation.

South Africa's MTN was among the bidders, but only for a stake in the SAT-3 underwater cable.

Nigeria has overtaken South Africa to become the biggest telecoms market in Africa.

But the government has struggled to sell the firm mainly because of the shambolic state of its fixed line infrastructure.

Its fixed lines have fallen to less than 100,000 from five times that number in 2001 and MTEL subscribers have dropped to a few thousand from over 1 million.

Nigeria ended Nitel's monopoly in 2001 and tried to sell it the same year. But preferred bidders failed to pay the $1.3 billion price tag by the deadline, leaving it in state hands.

Local conglomerate Transcorp later bought a majority state in the firm but the government took back control last June, citing a lack of investment and unpaid debts.

Nigeria came close to selling Nitel in late 2005 to Egypt's Orascom Telecom, but the government rejected the $257 million offer as too low.

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What is the difference between a liar, a hypocrite and a thief? You wouldn’t know how difficult a question this is until you try to answer it. Where for instance would you place House of Representatives member Ndudi Elumelu, Chairman House Committee on Power; or his Senate counterpart Nicholas Ugbane? Most Nigerians were actually beginning to come to terms with the fact that the only thing we have to worry about nowadays is bad governance; that the era of impunity and bare-faced lies is over. But representative Elumelu is presenting a very special challenge to all our suppositions. Is our country really, truly this hopeless? Is Elumelu the same young man who was spitting fire and swearing to expose corruption in the power sector only a few months ago even if that would cost him his life? It is nearly impossible to marry that other Elumelu with the present pathetic, tragic figure; at the EFCC headquarters last week he looked every inch like a lizard that narrowly escaped drowning. If the ugly facts of this disgusting development were not so glaring, many Nigerians would have been satisfied with the theory that the young man is a victim of political pacification between President Umaru Musa Yar’adua and his mentor, tormentor and benefactor, former President Olusegun Obasanjo. That rather attractive theory goes like this. That following Yar’Adua’s damaging observation that the Obasanjo regime had spent $10 billion on power sector “without commensurate result”, Obasanjo read that as a frontal attack on his person and his regime. It was a correct diagnosis because no sooner had Yar’adua pronounced those words than they became the defining phrase of the Obasanjo legacy. As a result relations between the two degenerated to a dangerous nadir. Inevitably Obasanjo’s moment came when a combination of self-propelled factors came together to make Yar’Adua a very unpopular president among virtually every sector of the Nigerian society, including his party the PDP. He was loosing grip and he desperately needed a lifeline. According to this theory, a contrite Yar’adua then turned to OBJ; OBJ was willing to help, but his price was a reversal of the damage that Yar’Adua’s comments and the power sector probe which the Elumelu committee sensationalized had done to his pride and legacy, such as it was. Thus began the process of rubbishing the Elumelu report and the setting up of an Ad Hoc committee which eventually cleared the former president and naturally indicted Elumelu himself. Insiders say that without the need to placate Obasanjo, Elumelu would have gotten away lightly with the N6 billion Rural Electrification Agency (REA) contract scam because it was a common practice between the members of the NASS to scratch each others’ back at the expense of Nigerians. Whether this outlandish theory is true or not, two facts are as clear as daylight: one, all those that have been so far indicted in the REA scam deserved to be where they are, including, unfortunately, the very popular and amiable permanent secretary of the ministry for power Alhaji Abdullahi Aliyu. The second fact is that Yar’Adua is out for blood like he’s never been before; (according to one account he rejected an intervention from Sultan Sa’ad Abubakar and refused to pick former president Shagari’s call on the same issue). The case against Elumelu and his conspirators is compelling enough. First there was this huge amount of money at the disposal of the REA waiting to be spent; the only problem was time because they had only two weeks within which to spend about N7bn otherwise it would have to be returned to the government coffers. So between the leadership of the House and Senate committees on power; the management of REA and the officials of the ministry for power, they quickly cooked up a plan. Elumelu and fellow legislators kicked aside all due process, submitted or caused to be submitted nine companies and asked the MD of REA to award those rural electrification contracts to them. The MD naturally added his own companies and wrote a letter to the permanent secretary of the power ministry for approval. The permanent secretary who was the Acting Minister at the time because the substantive minister Hajiya Balaraba Ibrahim had been removed by the president on the instigation of some of those same conspirators, inexplicably overlooked the flagrant disregard for due process and granted approval for the contracts and the payment of 15 per cent of the fee. The balance of 85 per cent was equally withdrawn from the REA account and lodged in the banks where those contractors have their accounts. Thus for all practical purposes, the contracts have been fully paid for. Never mind that in all probability none of those constituent communities that were supposed to enjoy those projects have seen one day of electricity since the contracts were awarded. All this those people were able to do within an incredible 14 days! You see, who said that government or bureaucracy is slow? (To be continued).
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