The federal government has blamed the widespread epileptic power supply in the country on the neglect by past administrations.
Minister of Power, Abubakar Aliyu, disclosed this to State House Correspondents on Thursday at the end of the extraordinary meeting of the Federal Executive Council presided over by Vice President Yemi Osinbajo at the presidential villa, Abuja.
Aliyu who presented 16 memos which were all approved by the council, said the Buhari regime has done more than its predecessors to ensure that Nigerians experience improved electric power supply.
According to him, the government is doing a lot to remedy the situation with heavy investments in the sector which he said had manifested in fewer grid collapses in the past few years.
While noting that the federal government has ordered new power equipment, the minister assured Nigerians that they will soon see the outcome of the ongoing investments.
Aliyu who lamented that the current power generation is about 5,000mw also decried what he termed “the weak transmission grid”.
Speaking on the memo he presented, Aliyu said, “Today, I presented to council 16 memos, which I seek for council’s approval and the council graciously approved all of them. At this point, let me say what these approvals will do to the nation’s electricity supply.
“As we’re all aware, the major problem we’re 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’re 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. So, that will release more capacity to the distribution leading to the customers.
“So, 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) has been privatised, 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 capacity of the TCN to be able to take up enough electricity from the generation.
“So, these memos. Although 16 of them, are all geared towards achieving what I’ve just explained.”
The PUNCH