Minister of the Federal Capital Territory(FCT), Nyesom Wike, has commenced the upgrade of the Airport Road lighting with intelligent Smart Light Emitting Diode (Smart LED) lights.
The upgrade is to actualise the vision of a greater FCT that will complement the ongoing massive infrastructural development.
The upgrading project awarded by the FCT Administration is meant to replace the conventional High-Pressure Sodium (HPS) with Smart LED to make the nation’s capital a 21st-century city like other developed country exit and entry points of the capital city.
Coordinator of the Abuja Metropolitan Management Council (AMMC), Felix Obuah, said there are plans to migrate all major Abuja roads and streets to smart LED.
He said the contract had already been awarded, adding that it would be taken bit by bit.
“We are ready to light up Abuja,” he said.
Obuah had last week decried the attitude of some streetlight contractors that failed to meet up with standards, threatening to blacklist them.
However, in a statement yesterday by an Executive Director of Tejaff Multi-Concept Limited, Mrs Ronke Ozoh, one of the features of the LED lighting system is the use of significantly lower energy to produce the same amount of luminosity.
The company in charge of the project, Concrete Thinking Limited, recently commenced the replacement of the HPS with the Smart LED.
Thousands units of Smart LED will be replaced from the Airport Road area to the central area of the FCT to give it the befitting looks of the smart city.
Ozoh, who visited the site last week, noted that LED lighting would result in a reduction of up to 60 per cent of the operations and maintenance costs of streetlight infrastructure.
She said a smart LED streetlight system is one of the enabling technologies for a Smart City, adding that the intelligent nature of this street lighting system enables remote management of streetlight assets and ensures enhanced.
“The intelligent smart LED can give the exact amount of energy consumed. It can also be detected from a central control unit if any of the bulbs is faulty. It will also help inaccurate energy consumption bills from electricity companies,” she said.
Similarly, an Abuja resident, Mr Lennox Adigwe, was quoted in the statement to have urged the Minister of the FCT to graciously extend it to other parts of the nation’s capital.
Adigwe said Constitution Road (B12), Independence Road (B6), and some other areas that needed to be upgraded.
He said apart from the provision of street lighting infrastructure that will enhance the aesthetics of the FCT and foster an improved night economy, the initiative would also provide jobs to thousands of people as well as ensure the safety of lives and property of residents.
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