FG attributes epileptic power supply to neglect by past governments

The Federal Government, yesterday, attributed the prevailing epileptic power supply in the country to neglect by past authorities that paid scanty attention to the development of the sector.

Minister of Power, Abubakar Aliyu, made the assertion at the end of the extraordinary meeting of the Federal Executive Council (FEC) presided over by Vice President Yemi Osinbajo at the presidential villa, Abuja.

The minister, who presented 16 memos from his ministry and got council approval for all, said the present administration had done more than previous governments to ensure that Nigerians began to enjoy improved power supply.

He explained that the government was doing a lot to remedy the situation with more investments in the sector in order to reverse the system collapse being witnessed in the country.

While noting that the government has placed order for power equipment, the minister assured that Nigerians will in no distant time, begin to witness the outcome of the ongoing investments.

Aliyu maintained that the present power generation in the country is about 5,000MW, just as he decried what he described as the weak transmission grid.

Speaking on the memo he presented, Aliyu stated: “Today, I presented to the council 16 memos. Let me say what these approvals will do to the nation’s electricity supply.

“The major problem we are having in the Electricity Supply Industry is to be able to evacuate sufficient electricity and distribute it. That is to say, we have a very weak transmission grid and distribution segment of the value chain.

“We may not be having much problem with generation. So, unless we’re able to strengthen the electricity grid, which is nationwide, and to expand, and to be able to evacuate what the grid can take to consumers, we will have a lot of problems ahead of us.

“So, what we are doing currently through various and several interventions is to be able to repair the grid by constructing new transmission lines, bringing in new equipment to replace the old ones at our substations, in order to release more capacity to the distribution and leading to the customers.

“The operational capacity, as you all know now, is hovering around 5,000 megawatts and the transmission and distribution.

“So, these projects that we brought to council today and got approvals are all geared towards strengthening the willing capacity of the transmission and towards distribution, even though as you all know, the distribution segment of the NESI (Nigerian Electricity Supply Industry) is been privatized, but we cannot fold our arms and allow them to continue not to do much in order to evacuate what the transmission can bring.

“But as it is now, even the transmission is not that strong. So, we need to put more investment into the transmission so that we can improve the wheeling capacity of the TCN to be able to take up enough electricity from the generation.

“So, these memos. Although there are 16 of them, they’re all geared towards achieving what I’ve just explained.”