Henry Umoru &
Inalegwu Shaibu
31 January 2012, Sweetcrude, ABUJA — Nigeria’s Minister of Power, Prof. Barth Nnaji, said, Monday, that the distribution capacity for power was expected to increase from 5,644MVA to 6,308MVA this year, just as he defended a budget estimate of N73,416,536,316 for 2012.
According to the Minister, with the new development, unplanned interruption of supply will be reduced from eight to six incidences per month per feeder on urban network and from 20 to 12 interruptions on rural networks.
He added that the average forced outage time per feeder per month was expected to be reduced from 30 hours to 18 hours, thereby yielding more revenue to the power companies.
The Minister said an additional generation capacity of 960MW was expected to be recovered from the rehabilitation of units at Kainji, Shiroro, Ughelli, Egbin and Geregu power stations during the year.
Meanwhile, the Chairman, Senate Committee on Power, Senator Philip Aduda (PDP, FCT), who urged the Minister to remove virement from the budget as it was never raised, however, advised the ministry to carry the workers along in the present reform process in the Ministry.
He also stressed the need for a human face to be brought to bear on the process, adding that people will always react and protest against the move if they are not part of the reform process.
Giving a further breakdown of the 2012 recurrent and capital budget proposals, the Minister told the committee that the total allocation to the main ministry was N19,305,004,602; N51,855,401,689 for Power Holding Company of Nigeria, PHCN; N650,136,658 for the National Rural Electrification Agency; NERC, N1,504,824,818; zero allocation for the National Power Training Institute and N101,168,549 for Nigeria Electricity Management Limited.
