Govt. Promises Stable Power Supply By October

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The Federal Government has promised that power supply would be stable in Nigeria from October this year.

The Minister of Power, Chinedu Nebo, made promise while briefing journalists after a closed-door power meeting, chaired by Vice President Namadi Sambo at the State House, Abuja.

The administration has however failed to deliver on past promises concerning electricity supply.

The Minister who noted that other issues in the electricity value chain were being addressed, said power supply had improved in the country in the past one week due to improved gas supply.

“The cheering news from all of these is that if you have noticed throughout the country in the past one week people have been getting much better power supply.

“The gas is now beginning to come back and it’s something that gives all of us a lot of joy.

“And we know that it will continue to grow that way even until December because now some of the facilities, maintenance, repair works on the gas equipment and so on.

“The gas producers have come to a place where almost all of these is being taken care of, and then the new gas we are expecting we have then trickling in right now.

“So that part of the shortfalls we’ve had in production up to this time, we hope that by the beginning of October, we will see a much better stabilisation of the entire power delivery system in the country.

“First, I would say we rejoice that for the first time in a long time we have been averaging over 4,500 MW when we include nearly 300 mw of spilling reserve which is always put there to make sure that the reliability and stability of the grid is ensured at all time.

“So, we are really moving forward; it may not be as rapidly as Nigerians expect but it is important to let everybody know that indeed we are advancing, we are making progress and we will continue to make progress’’ he said.

He also noted that the Federal Government is making arrangements to ensure that the bills of electricity generating companies are promptly paid.

“The generation companies have been complaining that they need to have all their bills paid.

“The good thing about this is that arrangements are being made to make sure that all the generation companies get their money as and when due.

“We are working on that. That is part of the meeting that was chaired by Mr Vice President.

“Next thing is how far we have come with the issue of even settling the gas question. The gas question has remained for quite a while.

“But very thankfully, the Honourable Minister of Petroleum Resources and I, the central bank governor and chairman of NERC met several times to address those issues.

“And that eventually ended in finding resources to take care of the indebtedness of the generation companies to the gas companies.

“So once we take care of the backlog, we insist that the gas companies will eventually produce more gas,’’ he said.