Nigeria’s Minister of Power, Works and Housing, Babatunde Fashola, says some cities in Nigeria can now boast of constant power supply.
He said this on the Sunrise Daily programme of Channels Television on Wednesday.
“Sitting down here I can tell you some states that have almost 24 hours – Kebbi, Yobe. Some have five, some have 10 and there are still outages,” he said.
He said the constant power supply in some states is due to the increase in the transmission capacity.
The transmission capacity has grown, he said, adding that the figure was about 8,100 watts as at December 2018.
“The generation capacity is also increasing,” he said.
“It is a value chain where the distribution is not matching up the available power and from time to time, there are slacks,” Mr Fashola said.
He said the Ministry of Power has moved forward but needs to implement the short term goals it set.
“The short term goals are incremental power and stable supply in some places,” he said.
“The government has decided that as 40 per cent holder of everything in the distribution of power, we have our programme to invest N72 billion which will involve installing transformers and all of that,” he said.
“We created a metre access provider regulation. What it does is to create a new plan of investment programme. We manufacture, produce, supply and install metres and fill the gap the distribution companies cannot raise capital to fill. They cannot do so alone, they must do so under a procurement policy with the distribution company,” he said.
The minister said the federal government will solve the problems of poor power supply in the country and will also keep informing citizens on the watts being consumed in the country.
“We are applying many solutions at the same time. So when we were talking about how much megawatts is being used, we have created a new page which will bring solution,” he said.
Mr Fashola recently sparked outrage by saying the federal government should not be blamed for poor electricity supply across the country.
The minister said business people operating in the sector should be blamed for the poor state of electricity supply to Nigerians.
He argued that since the sector has been privatised, it was not the Nigerian government’s fault if citizens fail to enjoy stable electricity supply
The minister also denied that he once said a serious government would fix power sector challenges within six months. He challenged anyone to produce any video where he made such a comment.
