50 Days In Office: Power Minister Laments of Inadequate Funds, Marshalls Out Priority Areas

Minister of Power, Engr. Abubakar D Aliyu, has lamented on the prevailing dearth of funds in the sector, blaming it for not meeting the expectations of electricity consumers.

Aliyu noted this in a statement marking his 50 days in office in which he took stock of developments in the power sect.

According to him, “We are aware that the Nigerian Power sector is confronted by many challenges which have not enabled the sector to grow as desired.

These challenges are reflected in the two over-arching problems of the Sector: “Service Quality: Too many people are still not satisfied with the quality of service in terms of hours of supply, voltage, Disputed/estimated bills, or have no access to electricity;

“Sector illiquidity. The payments the DisCos are able to collect from consumers does not cover the full investment and costs of the GenCos who produce and sell the power, and Transmission Company of Nigeria which wheels the power to the DisCos. Federal Government financial support is required to cover the shortfall. The resulting huge burden on Government is unsustainable.”

He however, enumerated that his immediate focus include achieving the following through effective policy, regulation and cooperative engagement with private and public sector operators:
Create liquidity in the electricity market;
Improve services in terms of hours of supply, billing transparency and accuracy, and wider access to electricity.

Other priority areas include to: Bring consumer, operator and investor confidence back to the sector to attract foreign and local investment into the sector; Create jobs; Promote competition and bring in more participants in the Nigerian Electricity Market (NEM).

He said the key policies and initiatives of the Ministry to achieve these aims are: –
Accelerate progress and completion of key projects of the Ministry and its partners, especially: Kashimbilla 40MW power station has already started generating power into the National Grid; Gurara phase 2 being developed in partnership with Ministry of Water Resources will soon be ready to deliver 30MW to the grid; Zungeru Hydroelectric Power Project is progressing towards completion next year to deliver another 700MW of renewable power.

He said it also include Systematic implementation of the Presidential Power
Initiative (PPI) of this administration.