Niger Delta Power Holding Company is asking Akwa Ibom State to help clear the last hurdles on a transmission line that has sat unfinished for nearly 20 years, as the state-backed power firm races to commission the project before the country’s next presidential handover.
Jennifer Adighije, the company’s managing director, raised the request during a visit to Governor Umo Eno, telling him that unresolved compensation claims from communities along the route have become the single biggest obstacle to finishing the 330-kilovolt line. The project was awarded in 2006 under the National Integrated Power Projects program, one of Nigeria’s flagship efforts to expand electricity capacity.
The numbers illustrate how close – and how stuck – the project is. Adighije said the contractor, Anit Energy, has completed roughly 90 percent of the engineering, procurement and construction work, and that towers and conductors worth millions of dollars have already been shipped to the corridor between Adiasim and Ikot Ekpene.
Much of that equipment is now sitting idle across several communities because crews can’t get access. Resolving the outstanding wayleave claims – the compensation owed to landowners and communities for the line’s right-of-way – would cost just under 4 billion naira, based on the company’s most recent valuation, she said.
‘We are therefore pleading for your kind intervention as a shareholder and board member of the company,’ Adighije told the governor, framing the state’s role as central to getting the contractor back on site.
NDPHC’s target is to commission the line before May 29, 2027 – the date tied to Nigeria’s next transfer of presidential power – though Adighije said that timeline depends on the community issues being resolved first.
The visit also touched on broader plans for the state’s power sector. Adighije pointed to Akwa Ibom’s growth in hospitality, commerce and industry as a driver of rising electricity demand, and said NDPHC – which she described as a backbone of Nigeria’s transmission and generation infrastructure – wants to support that expansion. She congratulated Eno on the recent creation of the Akwa Ibom State Electricity Regulatory Commission, noting that NDPHC has already begun talks with the new body over market rules for the state. A joint working group, she said, is now reviewing NDPHC’s existing assets in Akwa Ibom to see how they can extend power access to underserved areas, tying the effort to the governor’s ARISE Agenda.
Patrick Obahiagbon, NDPHC’s executive director for strategy and commercial affairs, used the visit to praise Eno’s handling of the state’s political landscape, comparing his administration to ‘a locomotive engine moving ceaselessly.’
Eno, for his part, committed to bringing the matter to the State Executive Council, saying the government would look at what support it could offer to move the project forward. He stopped short of specifics.
The stakes extend beyond one transmission line. Akwa Ibom is trying to build out an electricity market of its own even as it courts industrial and hospitality investment, and a functioning 330kV connection would feed directly into that push – as well as into the wider national grid. NDPHC’s more immediate concern, though, is simpler: get the contractor back to work before deployed equipment sitting exposed in host communities degrades further, and before another dry season passes without resolution.