“Year in year out, the ministry presents the same items in the budget and asks for more funds to execute the same projects,” the Senator Eyinnaya Abaribe-led committee said.
Browsing: Mr. Babatunde Fashola
“On Friday Dec. 8, we reached an all-time power production of 7,000 and a great peak supply of 5,155 megawatts, which Nigeria has never produced or generated. The last supply was 5074 MW in January 2016, after which we went into a season of disruption of gas supply by militants.”
Fashola said, “The Azura power plant will give us another 450MW; I know that we will also get 10MW of wind power from Katsina State. I know that we will get 115MW from Gbari and 30MW from Kashimbila.”
“And every day, unfortunately, we are seeing meter bypass live and we are taking punitive interventions in terms of revealing them (defaulters) and surcharging them. So, for large power users, the monitoring is online. Let me just categorically say that they should not even attempt, it, because they will be caught.”
It, however, explained that before the takeover, technical competence reviews including forensic audits of all the Discos and the adequacy of their technical partners should be undertaken to ensure that they had not failed in their initial agreements with the government after the privatization exercise.
“You can see that debt is almost paid. That and all the regulations being put in place as highlighted by the Nigeria Electricity Regulation Commission are part of government’s commitment to its Power Sector Recovery Programme,” he noted.
“Now that the rains are coming to an end we expect some minor, not major, reduction in the production from the Hydro, and we must work now to keep all the gas stations well maintained and operational.”
Fashola said, “The project is a new dawn for Nigeria’s power diversity and energy mix. It will give us the opportunity for energy security. It will also give us the opportunity to comply with our Paris Climate Change Agreement because it will be delivering renewable energy.”
With the declaration and subsequent roll out of the regulation, each of the four categories of eligible customers in the electricity market now has an option: either to contract supply directly from the Generation Companies (Gencos) or to demand robust supply regime from their Discos.
He said, “The Fast Power project is a presidential initiative. I don’t see how that will happen without appropriation; without it being in the budget.
