Minister: We’re resolving right-of-way issues hindering power projects

Abubakar Aliyu, minister of power, says federal government is making “significant progress” in resolving right-of-way (RoW) issues to ensure timely completion of power projects.

Aliyu spoke in Abuja on Monday at an interactive session on “Frequent National Grid collapse”, with the senate committee on power and critical stakeholders.

In January 2020, TheCable had reported that 14 states hiked RoW charges.

The RoW charge is the levy paid to state governments for laying of optic fibre on state roads.

He also said the federal government is working towards improving the reliability of the nation’s power grid.

The national electricity grid suffered a system collapse three times between March and April 2022, leading to power outages across the country.

According to him, the country has witnessed improvement in the grid stability over the years.

“For example in 2017, we had 15 total collapse incidents, in 2018, we had 12, in 2019, we had nine in 2020, we had four and in 2021, two,” NAN quoted the minister as saying.

“This year, we have had three collapses due to severe disturbances on the grid.”

The minister explained that system collapse usually occurred when there were imbalances between the connected generation, transmission and distribution network.

He, however, said the government was doing everything within its power to ensure that the country had a reliable grid.

“This administration has invested huge sums to see that Nigeria has a stable, reliable grid transporting quality power,” he added.

“Another challenge we are having are issues of right-of-way across various states.

“Just recently, I raised this issue with the governors during one of their meetings. I am pleased to inform you that we are making significant progress.

“I am pleased to inform you that we are making significant progress.

“Once we fully execute these projects across the states, coupled with the efforts we are making to increase operational capacity, we can assure you that we will have a strengthened and reliable grid.”

Earlier, Gabriel Suswam, chairman of the senate committee on power, said he was concerned about the collapse of the grid which started in March and has been recurring.

“There are different explanations from the different parastatals and the ministry. Nobody knows what the problems are,” he said.

“Nigerians have been subjected to very high epileptic service of power. The tariff has not abated, rather, we hear rumours of tariff increase when people are not getting the energy they are paying for.”