The federal government has blamed its inability to reach the
target of 5,000 megawatts of electricity generation as promised on a shortage
of gas supply.
Abubakar Aliyu, minister of power, said on Wednesday at the
end of the federal executive council (FEC) meeting presided over by President
Muhammadu Buhari at the Presidential Villa, Abuja.
Aliyu regretted that power generation had remained at around
4,000 megawatts due to gas constraints despite the government‘s contract with
the Nigerian Bulk Electricity Trading (NBET) Plc.
He said “necessary ingredient has been obtained to resolve the problem” as his ministry is working round the clock to improve the situation.
“Regarding the drop
of electricity, yes, you know, the supply has so many players, gas, the cost
that drops, issues of gas to some power plants, they cannot switch on their
plant if they do you will experience some drop once they switch on, the
electricity will increase,” he said.
“There may be a drop due to the fault of the generator. It’s
mostly generation. I’ve been watching since like yesterday (Tuesday) evening,
we had a generation of around 4600 megawatts. And you know, we told you since
1st July, that we’ll be able to raise it to 5000 when we activated the
contract.
“And we have not been able to do so, due to some issues
around gas contracts, gas to power, which we are trying to take care of. And we
have gone very far with that, and I believe, is for that reason that we’re able
to reach up to 4600 as of yesterday.
“This morning, it
dropped to 4100. So, this is what is happening, you will be experiencing this
fluctuation due to all these issues around gas to power because gas is not
something that we control directly, they will not give you gas until you pay.
So, we are looking at ways to solve that issue.
“It is the reason we are unable to reach that 5000 we
promised you by July 1 of this year. But as you will see from that date, July
1st, we have been around 4000 megawatts since then. Even if you experience a
drop, it may not be throughout the day, you will see by evening it will rise
again, just like I saw 4600 megawatts yesterday evening. So this is the
situation. So we’re working around the clock to ensure that we raised the
capacity to the required level.”
The minister added that the council approved N2.74 billion
as the revised estimates for the updated rates of building structures of
compensation and resettlement of the communities affected by the construction
of the 700 megawatts Zungaro Hydro electric power project.
The amount revised the subsisting amount from N19.640
billion to N22.38 billion.
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