The Lagos State Police Command immediately swung into action on a show of force across strategic locations in Lagos today Thursday 10th June, 2021, with some of the newly received security vehicles and gadgets from the Lagos State Govenrment, just after the Commissioning of the equipment by the President and Commader-in-Chief of the Armed Forces, Federal Republic of Nigeria, President Muhammadu Buhari today at the Police College,Ikeja-Lagos.

The RRS team, led by the Commander RRS, CSP Yinka Egbeyemi, in the process hit notorious flashpoints in Agege, Seven Up cum Ojota axis, Surulere to Eko bridge where notorious traffic robbers and miscreants have been terrorising innocent motorists and commuters, and arrested nineteen (19) suspected traffic robbers. The operation is ongoing and currently mounting surveillance on the Eko bridge.

The Commissioner of Police, Lagos State, CP Hakeem Odumosu, has ordered the Area Commanders, Divisional Police Officers and tactical Commanders, especially the Commander RRS, CSP Yinka Egbeyemi, to make judicious use of the newly donated equipment and decimate the activities of hoodlums at the identified areas across the state. He further directed that additional traffic surveillance officers, with motor bikes, be deployed to the strategic places in the state in order to suppress keep criminals at bay.

CP Hakeem Odumosu also assured the general public of adequate security of lives and property in the state, while he orederd that the suspects be transferred to the Command’s Special Squad for thorough investigation.

In order to improve electricity supply around Ibeju-Lekki area in Lagos and Agbara Industrial area in Ogun State, the Niger Delta Power Holding Company (NDPHC) and Eko Electricity Distribution Company Plc (Eko Disco), have signed a bilateral agreement for the sale of up to 300MW of power from NDPHC’s power plants to customers in these areas within Eko Disco’s franchise areas.

The Lagos State Governor, Mr. Babajide Sanwo-Olu who hosted the signing of the agreement for these projects at Lagos House, Marina recently, commended the initiative by NDPHC and Eko Disco, and stated that “he will monitor the implementation of the agreement.” The Governor expressed his confidence that the collaboration between NDPHC and Eko Disco will complement the current policies of the state government in economic and infrastructure development.

NDPHC and Eko Disco have committed to work together to deliver safe, reliable and steady supply of power to customers in the areas of collaboration. The project will be structured to remove the commercial and technical inefficiencies in the Nigerian electricity market and will mobilise significant capital investment in transmission/distribution infrastructure and metering technology.

In his remarks, the NDPHC Managing Director/CEO, Mr. Chiedu Ugbo stated that the challenges in the industry inspired NDPHC to “source alternative means to sell and ensure dispatch of its stranded power generation capacity and explore innovative ways to unlock investment in infrastructure for improved supply to customers.”

In turn, the MD of Eko Disco, Engr. Adeoye Fadeyibi said that the partnership aligns with the efforts of the Eko Disco to bridge the metering gap and improve the quality of electricity supply to customers. He appreciated customers for their continued support for the Company in its quest to continue to empower the quality of lives of all stakeholders.

The agreement signed between NDPHC and Eko Disco is only the latest milestone in NDPHC’s innovative and ambitious programme to tackle the industry-wide challenges in the Nigerian power sector. These challenges have resulted in the inability of the operators in the industry to fulfil their investment and industry payment obligations, and a continuing low access to reliable power for industry, businesses and homes.

Despite a significant installed generation capacity – estimated to be more than 13,000 MW – access to electricity remains acutely low because much of this installed capacity is stranded and cannot be conveyed to customers because of inadequate transmission and distribution capacity. Operators insist that tariffs remain at a level that cannot guarantee returns for investors in the sector and as a result, an estimated $20 billion capital investment required to upgrade the transmission and generation infrastructure is not available. Insufficient investment in metering, collection and surveillance, among other factors, has also made collections by the distribution companies inefficient, thereby causing revenue loss across the value chain. A combination of these factors has led to severe liquidity shortfalls and a ballooning deficit in the market, and there simply is not enough collections from customers to cover the cost of power generation and delivery. The Federal Government has on several occasions intervened with financial bailouts to the sector, but this solution is only short term and is becoming an increasingly heavy burden on a cash-strapped government struggling with low oil prices and a struggling national economy.

The operators in the industry have had to innovate or go out of business. It is in this regard that NDPHC is blazing a trail in structuring deals that are solving many of the industry-wide challenges affecting its business. NDPHC, holds a portfolio of 10 power plants with aggregate installed capacity of more than 4,000MW and growing. To ensure that much of its capacity does not remain idle, NDPHC, with support from Electric Utilities Nigeria Limited, is now targeting to work with discos and other project developers to, in the first phase, sell more than 1,000MW from its power plants in manner that resolves the current commercial and technical inefficiencies in the market without a need for government funding intervention.

In addition to the agreement signed with Eko Disco, NDPHC has executed similar agreements with Port Harcourt Electricity Distribution Company Plc, Enugu Electricity Distribution Company Plc, Kaduna Electricity Distribution Company Plc and Benin Electricity Distribution Company Plc. In each case, the parties will mobilise investment in the expansion of the distribution network of the discos to enable increased offtake of power and in metering technology including smart meters in order to increase the collection rate of the discos.

For NDPHC, these collaborations will lead to greater offtake of power from its under-dispatched power plants, thereby increasing the company’s revenue. For the industry generally, these collaborations will attract the requisite investment in the industry and increase liquidity that enables higher payment receipts across the value chain. Now that NDPHC has executed the agreements with 5 discos and more in the pipeline, it is projected that the impact on the Nigerian power sector will be massive in improving electricity access, market payments and attracting more investments to the industry.

The Chairman, Conference of Chairmen and Director of Public Libraries in Nigeria, Mr. Giwa Franklin who is also the Director, Ogun State Library Board has decried the growing poor reading culture among the youth in Nigeria as worrisome, imploring the government at all levels to wake up and rescue the situation by developing and equipping libraries with modern facilities that would attract the youth in considering reading as a normal norms and right culture.

Mr. Giwa in a chat with the newsmen in Abeokuta, said development of public Library has not only suffered long time neglect but also been poorly funded, Pointing to inadequate staffing, lack of modern equipment in public Libraries, nonconductive library environment, which devoid of a worthwhile recreational and online facilities, that could lure people to read for intellectual research, encourage developmental skill writing, knowledge gathering among others are parts of challenges confronting the subsector.

He said that irrespective of the challenges confronting the increase in poor reading culture of African people and Nigeria in particular, the Ogun State government under the leadership of Governor Dapo Abiodun has brought in a new innovation which has brought complete restructuring, remodification and reorganization into the State Library to achieve its set objective for the State educational development.

He highlighted some of the steps taken by the present administration in restructuring the State Library, which includes; the introduction of ICT based Library with print, soft and internet facilities where people can conveniently access information without stress, cheering e-community where everybody will be computer savvy, promoting paperless library, digitalizing all books and bibliographies, creating soft links to about 100 computers system where more than 7,250 materials are being uploaded into the server for all readers across the State.

He said in the area of manpower development, the staff of the state library received first of its kind training and retraining on modern Library Science, disclosing that the present administration had helped in exposing the staff to major Conferences and workshops, in order to increase their knowledge and skill particularly in Library and human management, where some of them just concluded a specialized training on modern Library development in Kano State.

Mr. Giwa said that the State had also embarked on complete restructuring and beautification of libraries in Ijebu-Ode and Simon Adebo in Abeokuta in accordance with global standard, while other libraries in Sagamu, Ikenne, Ilaro and Ota were not left out in the ongoing restructuring as work had been concluded to turn them around into befitting edifice.

He explained that some of them had been completely revamped with new chairs among other core facilities, such as installation of computers to ensure full capacity, noting that for a long time, public library in the state had suffered neglect and left undeveloped by the immediate past administration, hailed Governor Abiodun’s resolve to uplift the lost glory of public Libraries across the state by making them conducive to encourage intellectual development and promote academic prowess among the young people in the state.

Mr. Giwa noted that part of the efforts put in place to further ensure a new dawn in the State public Library, was the survey of about 3,000 libraries carried out in public Primary and Secondary schools in collaboration with Ogun Digit Class to ascertain their conditions and put in place necessary facilities to ensure their full utilization.

He noted that effort is also geared towards the creation of Gateway Readers’ Club across Schools in the state, saying the government had also synergized with the World body such as Book Aids for a renewed support in books supply and in other areas to enhance the State Library.

He added that Governor Abiodun sincere interest in developing public Library led to resuscitation of Counterpart Funding which was last paid in 1998, saying that Governor Abiodun administration through the Ministry of Education, Science and Technology had resolved to end poor reading culture affecting patronage of public Libraries in the State through strategic implementation of laudable policies that would further make public Library more attractive and conducive for intellectual recreation, academic research and socio-economic development of the state.