TELL Magazine

Nigeria’s Power Minister, Adebayo Adelabu, has raised the hope of Nigerians of an imminent end to epileptic power supply in the country, assuring that all the problems bedeviling the sector would soon be a thing of the past.

Adelabu, who spoke on Friday when he paid a working visit to Edo State to inspect the Benin Electricity Generation Company power plant in Ihovbo, under the Niger Delta Power Holding Company, (NDPHC) attributed the problem of poor power generation to shortage in gas supply which he said the government was working on, “and the good news I will like to mention here is that succour is close to us”.

Lamenting that despite the huge investment by the Federal Government in the power sector the investments had remained under-utilised, Adebayo said his ministry would push for the removal of all hindrances that had prevented the power plant from operating maximally and put it at disadvantage against plants owned by the private sector.

He noted that the government had invested so much money in the energy sector, but it was lamentable that Nigerians were still battling with issues of light.

According to the minister, “I have gone round this installation, and I am quite impressed with what we have here. Contrary to general belief, Nigeria has invested so much in power generating plants, and these plants are the state-of- the-art plants. They are well maintained; they are in very good conditions, and they are in a condition that can give us the kind of power generation that we need in this country, except that there are a lot of capacity distortions.

“I will take them one after the other. I got to the Ihovbo plants which belongs to the Federal Government under the Niger Delta Power Holding Company. It is a plant with four gas plants in a very good condition, with a capacity of about 125 megawatts each which is a total of 500 megawatts.

“They are well maintained plants, and the running hours of each of these are all below 30,000, which means that, effectively, they have not been run more than three years even though they have been installed almost eight or 10 years ago. They are as good as brand-new turbines, but surprisingly, it’s only one turbine that is operational today, generating about 100 megawatts of power as against the installed capacity of 500.

“That is just 20 percent capacity utilisation, and which is a gross lack of optimisation of our investment as a country. If we have put in so much into establishing these power plants, it should be able to give us the kind of power that we require”.

Adebayo further assured that “Relief is close to these power plants as the Federal Government, with the Federal Ministry of Finance, the Federal Ministry of Budget and Economic Planning, and the Federal Ministry of Power; we have met with Mr. President, and he has mandated us to go and work out how we are going to defray the outstanding debts being owed”.