08 February 2012, Sweetcrude, ABUJA – Nigeria has now attained the installed capacity to generate 5,000 megawatts of electricity, Professor Barth Nnaji, the minister of power, has announced. But, he says lack of natural gas to fire the nation’s existing power stations has hampered the actual realisation of the target.
Speaking, Tuesday, at the Presidential Villa, Abuja, at the end of the meeting of the Economic Management Team, the minister reassured of government’s determination to ensure steady rise in power generation and supply in the country.
According to Nnaji, who also assured of a steady addition of at least 1,000 megawatts to the national grid yearly, the nation was now generating over 4,000 megawatts.
He disclosed that there had not been any system collapse this year, adding that, that has given him hope that power will soon become stable.
Nnaji said: “We are making progress in our efforts to make more power available to Nigerians. What we are interested in is whether Nigerians are getting more power and we can see this in terms of the quantum of power available.
“The good news is that we have not had any system collapse as we were used to having. In the Past, we have systems collapse about four times in one month,” he said.
“We had promised 1,000megwatts annually. That’s where we are now. We have over 5,000 megawatts installed capacity but we are not getting all due to gas supply problems”.
The minister, who also spoke on the ongoing privatisation in the power sector, stated that the federal government was still negotiating with Labour and that everything was being done for the smooth-running of the programme.
