President Muhammadu Buhari and the All Progressives Congress (APC) was elected to solve four major problems including power supply, security, unemployment and corruption. However, since it assumed office, the government has only been able to tackle corruption effectively and security to a lesser extent, with power supply in particular defying solutions.
Yesterday, Alhaji Mohammed said sorry for the hardship which the poor power situation has created, blaming the prevailing situation on gas failure, sabotage and the vandalisation of infrastructure. He added that all efforts were being made to rectify the matter and ensure a gradual improvement in the power situation.
Alhaji Mohammed said: "There will be a decent improvement in the power situation from this weekend, thanks to on-going remedial efforts that will double the current power supply to 4,000WW. Getting back to the 5,074MW all-time high that was reached earlier will take a few more weeks.”
"The vandalisation of the Forcados export pipelines forced oil companies to shut down, making it impossible for them to produce gas. Then, workers at the Ikeja Discos, who were protesting the disengagement of some of their colleagues after they failed the company’s competency test, apparently colluded with the National Transmission Station in Osogbo to shut down transmission."
He added that the routine maintenance by the Nigeria Gas Company had affected the supply of gas to power stations, forcing down power supply from an all-time high of 5,074 MW to about 4,000MW and that a combination of unsavoury incidents further crashed the power supply to about half that figure. Alhaji Mohammed strongly condemned the situation in which some Nigerians, under the guise of the various unions in the oil and gas sector or others through sheer vandalisation, would continuously sabotage the country’s power infrastructure.
”Finally, the unfortunate strike by the unions at the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation, over restructuring, shut down the Itarogun Power Station, the biggest in the country. Due to these factors, only 13 out of the 24 power stations in the country are currently functioning and it is this same kind of unsavoury situation that has affected fuel supply and subjected Nigerians to untold hardship.
”The bitter truth is that for as long as these groups of Nigerians continue to sabotage the power infrastructure, Nigerians cannot enjoy a decent level of power supply. We therefore admonish all Nigerians who may be agitating for their rights in whatever form to refrain from any action that will further hurt the same people they claim to be protecting,” Alhaji Mohammed said.
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