Nigeria’s electricity generation has increased by 114.7megawatts (MW) from 3,060.35 MW it recorded two weeks ago to 3,175.05MW as at 19th April 2015, according to data from the Federal Ministry of Power and Presidential Task Force on Power.

This is still below the peak generation level of 4,517.6MW achieved three years ago.

The country’s power generation capacity currently stands at 6,000 MWs and is to the expected to grow to 40,000 MW by 2020.

According to the report, the country’s peak generation stands at 3,496.2MW; Peak Demand forecast, 12,899.99MW; and Energy sent out, 3,104.50.

Giving reason for the country’s inability to achieve regular electricity, the Minister of Power, Prof. Chinedu Nebo, said that the Federal Government has the capacity to generate 5,500MW of electricity to Nigerians regularly if there was adequate gas supply.

According to him, the benefits of the power projects were denied the citizens by the activities of pipeline vandals

“With regard to our generation today, I would like to make a differentiation between installed capacity and available capacity.

“Because of the projects that have commissioned, we have a capacity now to deliver minimum of 5,500mw with gas because when I talk about availability, we are also talking about gas.

“The problem today is still vandalism. Whether it is the Eastern or Western axis, we keep suffering vandalism and it happened almost predictably every two weeks.

“Once they hit the Western axis, the Excravos – Lagos pipeline, the only reason they hit it is apparently for sabotage because you can’t collect the gas, you can’t sell the gas or store the gas.

he said the government repaired pipelines with N120 million every month.

The minister said vandalisation had made the country lose about 1,600 megawatts of electricity at a particular time.