23 0ctober 2012, Sweetcrude, ABUJA – NIGERIA plans to bring sustainable electricity supply to about 75 percent of Nigeria’s total population within the next 13 years, Minister of State for Power, Mr. Darius Ishaku, has said.
Ishaku said that by the next 13 years when the government hoped to meet this target, power generation in the country would have reached 40,000 megawatts, mw.
Ishaku said at a regional dialogue on the use of renewable energy technologies to improve agricultural activities organised by the Forum for Agricultural Research in Africa, FARA, in conjunction with the Office of the Special Adviser to the President on Special Duties in Abuja that the ambitious plan will see a swift increase in the percentage of people with electricity in the country.
The Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission, NERC, had in a survey it conducted in 2011 on the percentage of Nigeria’s population with access to electricity stated that about 35 percent of Nigerians are properly metered and captured as legitimate consumers of electricity supplied from the national grid.
Represented by the Director Electrical Inspectorate Services, EIS, in his ministry, Mr. Kayode Adebisi, Ishaku said the government, in its plan to increase access to electricity across Nigeria was consciously making efforts to encourage sustained and complimentary mix in the country’s power generation profile.
Said he: “The natural target is to have at least 10 percent of electricity generated in the country to come through renewable by 2025, that way our 75 percent projection can be guarantee.
“Already, the 10mw Katsina wind plant is about to be commissioned, feasibility studies on dams across the country are going on and it is believed that such energy mixes which are also within the power sector reform document of the government will complement traditional sources of generating power here in Nigeria.”
Ishaku also assured that reform measures taken in the power sector would also impact on Nigeria’s agricultural sector, adding that the development of dams across the country would offer good irrigation opportunities to holding farms and settlements within such regions.
