Government official tried to stop me from building $2bn power plant, says Davido’s father
Adedeji Adeleke, a Nigerian businessman, says he is building a $2 billion power plant.
Adeleke, the father of David Adeleke, a popular Afrobeats singer known as Davido, spoke at the Seventh Day Adventist General Conference Annual Council on Tuesday.
He said the 1,250-megawatt (MW) power plant will be the biggest in Nigeria when it starts operation in January 2025.
“I am building and almost completed in January by the grace of God my new power plant that will be the biggest power plant in Nigeria.
“It is a 1,250MW power plant to become operational in January.”
ADELEKE’S $2BN POWER PLANT FACED CHALLENGES
Adeleke said he faced challenges while building the power plant, one of which was a government official, who vowed to ensure the project was not completed.
“But during the course of the design and getting all the permits we ran into some difficult government officials. For environmental reasons, our permit was denied,” he said.
“The particular government official that I held a meeting with, told me to my face that this project would never see the light of the day.
“So I was disappointed and told my Chinese friend that unfortunately we have these difficulties and it may take a while before we can get this going again.
“Meanwhile 1,250MW power plant price tag is about $2 billion, so it’s not small money and a lot of money has already gone into design and preliminaries.”
The businessman also said he got investment from his Chinese friend and the Bank of China also supported his company.
Adeleke said while his business partner from China was worried, he presented the situation before God.
“So I continued to pray about it. The following week, on a Wednesday, I got a call from the ministry of power that I should come to the minister’s office. So I went and I was handed over my permit. I didn’t know what happened,” the businessman said.
“All I did was pray about this. So I asked one of the officials, what exactly happened. Why am I collecting this from this office and not the other office? And the person told me that the particular government official that wanted to block us took ill, and was flown to Germany for treatment.”
Speaking on other challenges faced, he said there were security breaches, including looters stealing valuable copper components from turbine machines.
As a result, Adeleke said the completion of the project was delayed for one year and was estimated to have caused about $5 million loss.
Also, Adeleke said he generates approximately 15 percent of Nigeria’s electricity.
“In Nigeria, I’m in the electricity business, I own power plants. I generate about 15 percent of electricity needs,” he said.
The businessman said he has Chinese engineering companies that work for him.
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