Garba Shehu: Nigeria now has capacity to generate more than 13,000MW

Garba Shehu, presidential spokesman, says the Buhari administration has greatly improved power generation in the country.

He said though the administration has been constrained by “situations on ground”, the government has been able to generate more than 13,000 megawatts of power.

Shehu said this on Friday in an interview on Sunrise Daily, a Channels Television programme, adding that the government has also doubled power availability in the country.

He said the government inherited a reckless privatisation of the power sector, done by the Goodluck Jonathan administration, but that it has been able to up its uptake by 5,000 megawatts.

In 2013, the power sector was privatised as the electricity distribution and generation sub-sectors were sold to core investors, while the federal government held the transmission sub-sector.

“The situation on ground constrained the government and the party from delivering as much more than what we have. As we speak today we have doubled power availability in the country,” he said.

“In terms of generation, it has improved 200 times. We have the capacity to generate more than 13,000 of power. The uptake is up to 5,000 as we speak now. That is not the best but it’s an improvement on the 2,500 megawatts that we inherited.

“We aspire to do 20,000 or 30,000 megawatts of power, we haven’t done that but we have launched 19,000 availability. It’s remarkable, why don’t we look inwards and use out the 13,000 that are available. A lot of power is generated and wasted in some cases.

“This government inherited a reckless privatisation process, which the president said in the interview that it was largely driven by the need to gratify political interest.”