Minister Fashola disclose
at the Federal Executive Council, FEC meeting, where he empathized with
Nigerians over the poor state of power supply across the country.
The Minister of Power Works
and Housing, Mr Babatunde Fashola, SAN, has expressed optimism on the
possibility of attaining 10,000 megawatts of electricity set by President
Muhammadu Buhari in 2019.
His words, “Essentially,
it’s gas supply issue arising from the problems that’s now well reported of the
failure of our operational platforms at Focados where the repairs are ongoing
to restore the petroleum lines gas lines. As a result of this, our power
production has dropped from 5,000 megawatt to about 3,200 megawatt depending on
other collateral problems. What was not enough at 5,000mw is even now much more
difficult to share at 3,000mw.
“We’re having increasing
success with some of our transmission projects. So, areas in the country that
did not have power supply when we were at 5,000mw now have transmission
restored. Places like Maiduguri, Okada, Makurdi transmission projects have been
completed there, they’re now benefiting from what was difficult to share
initially. So, it’s a mixed blessing in some places.
“We understand that people
are going through a difficult time. It’s a bad time to have energy crisis and
there is no good time to have one. But it’s a temporary thing; we’ll go back to
normal service when gas is fully restored.
We’re working to make sure that
should this happen again in future, we’ll be better position to respond by
increasing the opportunities for local gas allocation and production from the
non-associated lines. This is a teething problem; it won’t last for long. Our
determination to overcome it is bigger than the problem, and I’m very sure it
will be overcome.”
He, therefore, added that
the government would achieve its 10,000 mega watts of electricity supply by
2019 in spite the reported vandalism of gas pipelines in some parts of the
country.
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