• Thursday, March 28, 2024
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Reps vow to investigate, punish people responsible for Nigeria’s poor electricity supply

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The House of Representatives on Thursday said it will soon find out those responsible for the poor power supply in the country.

The Chairman of the House Committee on Power, Magaji Aliyu who made the remarks during a tour of the Ogorode power plants in Sapele, Delta, and the Benin generation company, said if found necessary action will be taken against those found guilty.

The committee chairman, who noted that Nigeria has the potential to generate over 10,000 megawatts of electricity from existing plants, said at the moment Nigeria currently generates about 3,000 MW which he described as insufficient.

“You can see the NIPP has above 4,000 megawatt installed capacity. I sincerely believe that the problem is not about generation, the problem must be from the transmission or the distribution.

“We have now canceled one out, we have a lot of power in this country, we shall soon find out who is to be blamed and action will be taken against them,” he said.

Earlier, the Managing Director of the Niger Delta Power Holding (NDPH), Chiedu Ugbo opined that inadequate gas supply, evacuation among others were the major problems facing power plants in Nigeria.

“Nigeria only generates electricity through gas and hydropower and the inconsistent gas supply across the nation was a major problem the generating companies have to battle with.

“Gas problem is that of liquidity, if you have the money you can get the gas company to invest.

“This is because people not are paying appropriate tariffs in any of the value chains which is affecting all the systems from the gas producers to the power distributor.

“And when they are not being paid enough they are also unable to cover their payment to their gas suppliers.

“So the Gas suppliers from our discussion do not have that incentive to continue supply gas to the electric power generation companies.

Ugbo, who explained that the Benin GenCo has four gas turbines with 504 installed capacity, disclosed that each unit has 125 megawatts.

He, however, described as fortunate that only one point is operating at pre-select.

“The National Control Centre asked us not to generate beyond a particular level so we are doing about 90/95 megawatts from that unit which ordinarily should be doing up to 115 depending on the temperature

“We were in Sapele yesterday, in Ogorode Sapele Power Plant with 504 installed capacity. we should be able to generate at least 450 megawatts depending on the temperature.

“If the barrel gas rate increases, we should be able to do two units which will give us at least 250 megawatts but unfortunately none was on yesterday because of grid issues.

“So if we generate and nobody is taking it from transmission company it becomes a problem, that is where the evacuation challenge comes in,” Ugbo said.

While commending President Muhammadu Buhari for the presidential power initiative, he added that the Siemens project would provide a holistic approach to the power sector problems.

He also added that the Siemens project would help to clean up the transmission and distribution networks to take the available megawatt sitting idle in the power plants.

“We have done a lot to assist the transmission company and we are still doing more. We have done over 80 projects in distribution and we are doing more to improve their capacity.

“As you can see for yourself we have idle capacity, out of 450 only 90 is generating,” he added.