The Minister of Power, Works and Housing, Babatunde Raji Fashola, SAN, has in a public briefing held in Abuja on Monday, said that the President Mohammadu Buhari lead Administration has fulfilled its promise on incremental, steady and uninterrupted power supply.
While briefing press on their scorecard after three years in office, and what his Ministry are doing on power, he said:
“I promised that we will improve on gas supply, increase the transmission capacity, pay MDA debts and generally improve your experience with power supply, first by getting incremental power, then proceed to stable power and hopefully reach uninterrupted power, increasing power generation from 4000MW to 7000MW”.
stating further, he said
“With regard to power, we have improved on what we met, by increasing generation from 400MW to 7000MW, transmission from 5000MW to 7000MW and distribution from 2,690MW to 5,222MW. Our work is clearly not finished, and we are still in the process of delivering additional generation from Kaduna 215MW, Afam IV 240MW, Kashimbilla 40MW, Gurara 30MW, Dadinkowa 29MW, and Power for 9 Universities, 15 markets and 2 big Hydropower plants of 700MW in Zungeru and 3,050MW in Mambilla”.
According to him, it would not be electricity on numbers alone, but also on experience.
He said:
“transmission has increased with the completion and energizing of over 90 transmission sub – station projects nationwide with Apo, Mayo Belwa, Damaturu, Maiduguri, Odogunyan and Ejigbo being recently completed. Distribution through over 100 injection sub – stations and distribution expansion programmes to be funded by the Federal Government now in advance state of procurement”.
Fashola also disclosed that the Mambilla Hydro power project in Taraba State, which would cost about $15,7bn, would provide jobs and economic benefits for Nigerians, adding that the project which would be financed by a loan from the Chinese government, and Federal Government’[s 15% counterpart fund, would lead to increased power supply in the country, when completed.
Speaking further, the Minister said “As our policies on Mini Grids, Meter Asset Provider, Eligible Customer, and liquidity sustenance and improved governance deepens, your experience with power supply can only get better.