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| Minister of Information, Mr. Labaran |
The
Federal Government on Wednesday regretted that despite the various
efforts being put into stabilising the power sector; about 120 million
Nigerians were still in darkness.
The Minister of State for Power, Mrs.
Zaynab Kuchi, disclosed this while briefing State House correspondents
on the outcome of the weekly Federal Executive Council meeting presided
over by President Goodluck Jonathan.
She was joined at the briefing by the
Minister of Information, Mr. Labaran Maku; Minister of Power, Prof.
Chinedu Nebo; Minister of Niger Delta Affairs, Mr. Godsday Orubebe; and
Minister of State for Niger Delta Affairs, Mr. Ishyaku Dahiru
The ministries of Power and Niger Delta Affairs had earlier presented their achievements and challenges for 2012 to the FEC.
Kuchi said for the entire 160 million
Nigerians to enjoy stable electricity supply, Nigeria must look in the
direction of Independent Power Projects.
She said the future of power generation and supply in the country rested with the IPPs and Public-Private Partnership.
The minister said the government was already looking in that direction.
She said, “Privatisation is at its
conclusive stage come July. What we need to focus on is the
commercialisation of the power sector, considering where we are and the
fact that we are only giving power to only 40 million Nigerians.
“We have 160 million Nigerians now and
we are only giving power to 40 million of that population. What it means
is that there are about 120 million Nigerians that are without power
and wish to buy power.
“We are looking into the energy mix;
what we are looking at are ways that will bring in so many other options
and the only way we can power Nigeria is to look forward to IPPs.
“We keep on saying we shouldn’t allow
imperialism; yes, we want foreign direct investments, but we also want
Nigerians to take ownership. If power sells on the street, power can
sell better because everybody wants power 24/7. We need to deliver power
to Nigerians and the only way to do this is by serious
commercialisation.”
Nebo, on his part, described the decline
being recorded in power supply in the last few weeks in the country as a
nightmare for the government, saying the nation had not witnessed such a
magnitude of system collapse for a long time.
He attributed the situation to natural occurrences such as storms that characterised raining season.
Nebo made specific reference to Bayelsa
and Birnin Kebbi, where storms destroyed transmission lines, as well as
Abuja where youths had allegedly vandalised power projects nearing
completion three times.
The minister also described poor funding
as one of the nightmares of the power sector, saying no fund was
provided for routine maintenance of the generation and distribution
companies this year.
He said the government worked on the assumption that the power privatisation exercise would have been completed in 2012.
Nebo said, “On the decline in power in
the past three weeks, I used the word nightmare to describe that just a
couple of days ago and there are reasons for that.
“Number one is that for a long time, we
have not had the kind of system collapse like the one we had recently.
System collapses occur because of various reasons. When the raining
season is about to take off robustly, there is a lot of storm. The state
of Bayelsa was knocked off for almost three weeks, because a huge tree
fell on the transmission tower, shattered it up to the foundation, and
if we hadn’t taken charge immediately and looked for alternative power
source for Bayelsa, it would have been in darkness till the end of June.
“But because of the measures we have
taken so far, it took about 10 to 12 days to restore power, using an
alternative mechanism, which is only short lived. The full correction
would have been concluded by the end of the month.”
Orubebe said his ministry had succeeded
in training of 701 non-militant youths in the areas of agriculture, oil
and gas as well as maritime.
He added that the ministry had been
regularly engaging stakeholders to sustain the peace currently being
experienced in the region.
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