* Engages Labour on electricity workers’ strike
The Federal government, on Wednesday, blamed shortage of gas supply for its inability to reach the promised 5,000 megawatts of electricity generation in the country.
The Minister of Power, Abubakar Aliyu, while briefing State House Correspondents at the end of the Federal Executive Council (FEC) meeting presided over by President Muhammadu Buhari at the Presidential Villa, Abuja on Wednesday, regretted that power generation has remained around 4,000 megawatts due to the problem of gas, despite government‘s contract with the Nigerian Bulk Electricity Trading (NBET) Plc.
He, however, assured that necessary ingredients have been obtained to resolve the problem as his ministry is working round the clock to improve the situation.
He said: “Regarding the drop of electricity, yes, you know, the supply has so many players, gas, the cost that drop, issues of gas to some power plants, they cannot switch on their plant if they do you will experience some drop once they switch on, the electricity will increase.
“There may be drop due to fault of generation. Its mostly generation. I’ve been watching since like yesterday (Tuesday) evening, we had a generation of around 4,600 megawatts. And you know, we told you since 1st July, that we’ll be able to raise it up to 5,000 megawatts when we activated the contract.
“And we have not been able to do so, due to some issues around gas contracts, gas to power, which we are trying to take care of. And we have gone very far with that, and I believe, is for that reason that we’re able to reach up to 4,600megawatts as of yesterday (Tuesday).
“This morning, it dropped to 4,100megawatts. So, this is what is happening, you will be experiencing this fluctuation due to all these issues around gas to power, because gas is not something that we control directly, they will not give you gas until you pay. So, we are looking at ways to solve that issue.
“It is the reason we are unable to reach that 5,000 we promised you by July 1 of this year. But as you will see from that date, July 1st, we have been around 4000 megawatts since then. Even if you experience a drop, it may not be throughout the day, you will see by evening it will rise up again, just like I saw 4600 megawatt as at yesterday evening. So this is the situation. So we’re working around the clock to ensure that we raised the capacity to the required level.”
The minister also revealed that FEC approved N2.740 billion, as the revised estimates for the updated rates of building structures of compensation and resettlement of the communities affected by the construction of 700 megawatts Zungaro Hydro electric power project.
The amount revised the subsisting amount from N19.640 billion to N22.380 billion.
Meanwhile, Aliyu said the Federal government has started holding discussions with the organised labour with a view to finding solutions to the various issues that prompted electricity workers to embark on strike.
He stated that the issue in contention center around employment, which is largely under the purview of the Head of Service and not the Ministry of Power.
He noted that the discussions have reached an advanced stage, adding that the Minister of Labour as well as the Minister of State for Power were absent at the executive council meeting on account of that meeting.