Sources said the local government has been without electricity since its creation.
The Commissioner of Rural Development, Alhaji Umar Mohammed, told journalists yesterday in Lokoja, the state capital, that the project cost the state government N22 million.
Mohammed said the first attempt to provide the local government with electricity in the old Benue State was stalled by the creation of Kogi State in 1991, adding that the Federal Government thereafter began the execution of the project in 2000 only to be abandoned in 2001.
He claimed that Governor Idris Wada in 2012 directed the Ministry of Rural Development to take over the project in fulfillment of his preelection campaign.
Mohammed said that the ministry immediately mobilised contractor to the site to replace bolts, cross bars, isolators and aluminum conductors to speed up the projected execution.
He said that the ministry later embarked upon township reticulation and steeped down the light by creating two substations at Oguma, the local government headquarters, and one each in two other major communities – Odenyi and Lando.
The commissioner said that the substations were provided with 500kva transformers fitted with feeder pillars, amour cable, lightening arrestor, gang isolators and earthlings and up risers.
He, however, said Governor Wada had directed that other towns in the local government, including, Mozum, Shintaku, Ugboloko and Gbiobe should be connected to the national grid latest by first quarter of 2014.
Mohammed described the completion of the electrification project as the most striking achievement under the rural transformation agenda of the present administration.
The commissioner expressed delight that all the 21 local government areas in the state had now been connected to the national grid.
