*Set to unveil roadmap for energy-mix next week
Oscarline Onwuemenyi
10 June 2016, Sweetcrude, Abuja – The Minister of Power, Works and Housing, Mr. Babatunde Fashola has said he was not overwhelmed running the affairs of the three key infrastructure providing ministries.
The minister, who stated this at the inaugural “Buharimeter Town Hall Meeting,” organised by the Centre for Democracy and Development (CDD), on Thursday, said .
President Muhammadu Buhari, who upon taking office last year initiated the last re-organisation of the ministries in order to enhance efficiency, merged three separate Ministries of Power, Works, and Housing and Urban Development, and Fashola, a former governor of Lagos State, was appointed to oversee it.
According to Fashola, who was responding to questions from the audience at the town hall meeting, the ministry in its present, enlarged state was not bigger than Lagos State which he successfully governed for eight years.
He said, “What is different is that I am working with a team I have not worked with before,” adding that he had to use a reasonable period of time to study the terrain.
Fashola said he had a capable hand as minister of state in the ministry, experienced permanent secretary and reliable members of staff.
He assured that the ministry under his watch would deliver on its mandate of providing stable electricity, good roads and affordable houses for millions of Nigerians.
Speaking further on the score card of the ministry in the last one year, Fashola said that he adopted three stages of “incremental, steady and uninterrupted supply” in the power sector.
He said the energy mix to be adopted in realising the three would be unveiled in a week’s time at the meeting of National Council on Power.
He said the country attained 5,000 megawatts electricity generation in February before the height of attacks on gas pipelines and oil infrastructure in the Niger Delta.
The minister noted that 23 of 26 power generation plants in the country were gas powered and the challenge of assessing gas was responsible for the drop in electricity.
He said the administration was putting measures in place to resolve the problem.
Fashola said the administration had successfully stabilised the hitherto bad Jebba – Ilorin road and contractors would return to the site of Lagos-Ibadan expressway in a week’s time.