Federal Government of Nigeria has approved 16 new power contracts.
Gatekeepers News reports that the Federal Executive Council (FEC) has approved 16 memos on power presented by the minister of power, Abubakar Aliyu.
The FEC meeting was presided over by Vice-President Yemi Osinbajo at the council chambers of the state house.
Aliyu disclosed this while addressing state house reporters at the end of the meeting.
He said the cost of the new power contracts is $65,606,420, €15,152,651 and N31,360,272,397.
Aliyu blamed the epileptic power supply in the country on the lack of attention paid to the development of the sector in the past.
He noted that the present administration has done more than its predecessors to ensure that Nigerians enjoy improved supply of electricity.
Aliyu said, “Today, I presented to the council 16 memos, which I seek for council’s approval and the council graciously approved all of them. At this point, let me say what these approvals will do to the nation’s electricity supply.
“As we’re all aware, the major problem we’re having in the Nigerian Electricity Supply Industry (NESI) is to be able to evacuate sufficient electricity and distribute them. That is to say, we have a very weak transmission grid and distribution segment of the value chain.
“We may not be having much problem with generation. So, unless we’re able to strengthen the electricity grid, which is nationwide, and to expand, and to be able to evacuate, what the grid can take to consumers, we will have a lot of problems ahead of us.
“So, what we’re doing currently through various and several interventions is to be able to repair the grid by constructing new transmission lines, bringing in new equipments to replace the old ones at our substations. So, that will release more capacity to the distribution and leading to the customers.
“So, the operational capacity, as you all know now is hovering around 5,000 megawatts and the transmission and distribution. So, these projects that we brought to council today and got approvals are all geared towards strengthening the willing capacity of the transmission and towards distribution.
“Even though as you all know, the distribution segment of the NESI is been privatised, but we cannot fold our arms and allow them to continue not to do much in order to evacuate what the transmission can bring. So, these memos, although 16 of them but they’re all geared towards achieving what I’ve just explained.”
