The President Muhammadu Buhari Federal Government through the Minister of Power, Engineer Abubakar Aliyu, on Wednesday, stated that it could not reach its earlier proposed Power generation target of 5,000 Megawatts, due to gas shortage, Page 36 learnt.
The Power Minister disclosed this to State House Correspondents, shortly after the Federal Executive Council, FEC, meeting, presided over by President Muhammadu Buhari, at the Council Chamber of the Presidential Villa, in Abuja.
Recall, that on July 1, 2022, that the Minister of State for Power, Mohammad Notezai, announced that an additional 5,000 Megawatts of electricity would be added to the National Grid by March 2023.
Reiterating the same stance in an interview on July 19, the Chairman of the Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission, NERC, Garba Sanusi, explained why the Commission’s 5,000MW target was realistic, saying that the feasibility of delivering such a level of supply to consumers is high.
Sanusi had lamented that 80 percent of the country’s Power generation comes from gas, and the sustainability of gas to generate plants has been constrained largely due to breakdown, vandalism, maintenance work, or disruption of supply to the Power plants by terrorists.
However, with the current supply below the target and fluctuating, the Power Minister once again blamed gas supply, saying that his Ministry does not have exclusive control to the vital resource.
According to him, whereas the government had entered into a firm contract with the Nigerian Bulk Electricity Trading Plc, NBET, Power generation has remained around 4,000 Megawatts, because of the problem of gas.
He stated that the Federal Government has firm contracts with only 5 of the 28 Power Generating Companies, GenCos, but will extend it to more GenCos to stabilise supply at 5,000MW.
Aliyu nonetheless, assured Nigerians that the government has “all the ingredients” to solve the Power supply challenges soon.
More news later…
