Militants disrupted my plans, says Fashola

Babatunde Fashola, minster of power, works and housing, has lamented the effect of the activities of the Niger Delta militants.

Speaking on Wednesday at a forum organised by NAN, the minister said after the announcement of 5,000 mega watts of electricity earlier in the year, the ministry was about launching into a new phase.

He explained that the nation’s power generating capacity had reached 5,000 megawatts before the recent vandalism of gas pipelines.

“The only reason I announced 5,000 this year that we have reached this bus-stop; because I was already heading to another bus-top, until we had the outages and blow up at the Chevron platform,” he said.

“Just as we were hoping that will soon be completed and we will get back on, that took us back to 3000.

“Then we were looking at ways to bypass and evacuate our condensates, so that we can get more gas, we had reached about 3,800.

“Then they hit again the Chevron pipeline in Escravos, the oil platform and also now the gas pipeline, the Excravos Lagos pipeline system, deliberate sabotage, took us down to 2,500 megawatts.”

He said despite the difficulties, significant progress was being made to proffer solution to the challenge of electricity generation in the country.

Fashola added that the nation’s power sector had the ability to advance its power generation, transmission and distribution through other sources.

The minister said that once the challenges confronting the sector have been addressed, Nigeria would be able to generate 12,000 megawatts of electricity.

“There are many perspectives to do this; we have today the capacity to generate at least 12,000 megawatts,” he said.

“If we fix all what is not working; let us even say that we are not building any new power plant, anything close to 12,000, we can do.

“But we won’t do it because out of over one hundred and forty turbines, only about half can get gas.”

He said electricity consumers who have meter cannot be affected by “crazy billing” from Distribution Companies (DISCOs).

The minister advised consumers to demand for metering, and also insist on paying for what they actually consumed.

“If you get a crazy bill, you must pay what you think you consumed. You are not obliged to pay for power that you do not use; those who have meter do not have problem,” he said.

“Once you do that, the new tariff protects you from being disconnected; it is the burden of the service provider to prove that you used the power.

“How do you prove that you used the power, you have to measure the power; for you to measure the power you must give me a meter.

“That is the incentive we put to protect the citizens so that the DISCOs can increase their metering.’’