NEW minister of infrastructure Babatunde Fashola intends to appoint power desk officers in each of Nigeria's 36 states as part of a desperate attempt to address the country's epileptic electricity supply problem.
Former Lagos State governor Fashola was appointed to head s super minister of power, works and housing by President Muhammadu Buhari last month with a mandate to develop the country's infrastructure. One of his main briefs is to provide regular power supply and address the current dependence on private generators.
According to Mr Fashola, his ministry will now have administrators in each state to address the power supply problem and he also collaborate with state commissioners of works and housing. He added that with the implementation of Electricity Power Sector Reform Act of 2005, government ownership of power changed and the government is now focused on transmission network and gas supply.
At the moment, generation companies known as Gencos and distribution firms called Discos focus on producing power and distributing it while the government was now a regulator through the National Electricity Regulatory Commission. Mr Fashola said that the federal government would strengthen this part of its responsibility so that it could hold the Gencos and Discos to their contracts with citizens.
He reiterated that government must play its role of providing gas and expanding the transmission network. According to the minister, the petroleum ministry has indicated an interest in building pipelines to transport gas to power plants that would add another 2,000Mw to power stock within 12 to 15 months.
Mr Fashola said the government has identified 142 projects of which 45 are at 50% completion and about 22 can be completed within a year. He explained that government would expand the carrying capacity of Gencos and Discos, so that in future there would be capacity to carry whatever power was generated.
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