The Upper Chamber of the National Assembly, the Senate on Tuesday directed the promoters of the Zungeru Power Project Concession to suspend the process until necessary infrastructure is put in place to avoid a repeat of the pitfall of some previous concessions.

Its position was sequel to the outcome of an investigative hearing on a motion titled “Ongoing Bid To Concession The Zungeru Hydroelectric Power Project Located In Niger State”, held on Tuesday by the Senate Committee on Power.

It stated that it was not opposed to the concession arrangements.

It told Representatives of the National Council on Privatisation (NCP) that it was surprised at the speed the programme was taking when  the vital infrastructure that will help in evacuating the power, like the 132 line and the 35 km are at 15% completion.”

The Senate was also disturbed by the apparent  discordant tunes from the major concessioners who contradicted the 25 years concession period announced by the Infrastructure Concession Regulatory Commission (ICRC).

The stakeholders had declared that the process will cover a window period of 30 years.

Due to this, the committee’s chairman, Gabriel Suswam asked that the project be suspended until all key players in the process are on the same page.

The committee fixed a meeting for  next Tuesday to feature the Ministers of Power, Finance and NERC, ICRC, BPE, among others.

The project is funded based on a debt equity ratio of 75% – 25% with Exim Bank of China providing a loan in the sum of $984, 323,013.08.

The balance of $309,250,000.00 was provided by the Federal Government as counterpart funding for the project.

The loan agreement for the project was executed on 27th September 2013 which is the commencement date of the project. The project was first conceived in 2001 and revised in 2012.