Promises Of Power And Fashola’s Political Hype, 340MW Expected Year End
The Oasis Reporters
10 June 2017
Nigeria started generating power in 1898.
In 119 years, Nigeria has managed to generate and distribute no more than circa 4,000MW or 4GW annually
China on the other hand generates 20,000MW or 20GW annually from Solar alone. That is not to mention what it develops from Gas, Hydro, Coal, Wind, and Bio.
What Nigeria generates annually after 118 years of generation, China is able to generate incrementally from Solar alone in 3 months.
This is Raji Fashola’s dilemma. As erstwhile governor of Lagos State, Nigeria’s commercial city (2007 to 2015) ,he pumped in loads of cash into the campaign of the APC presidential candidate, Mr. Muhammadu Buhari, a former Army General, who was running with former Lagos State Attorney General, Mr. Yemi Osinbajo, a professor of Law.
Then Mr. Fashola made the right noises that if a government cannot provide electricity in six months for it’s citizenry, that government should resign.
Muhammadu Buhari heard , and he was impressed.
And Buhari won the election.
After a delay of six months without a cabinet and with Nigeria’s economy going downhill, he finally named a Cabinet and made Raji Fashola his Minister of Power, Works and Housing, believing that he had found a performer. The man has turned out to be a fluke, showing that talk is cheap.
Worse still, Fashola, a smart Senior Advocate of Nigeria has since denied making any such promises about delivering power in six months and also threatened whoever questions him on corruption allegations of lawsuits.
Meanwhile he has blamed everything on lack of savings by the previous government to snakes, Militants, low rainfall, lack of gas etc as his reasons for lack of delivery.
But Fashola did one thing earlier in the week . He has promised to deliver 340MW before December, a clear 2 years and 7 months after the government was sworn in.
Babatunde Fashola, the minister of power, works and housing said on Thursday that 340 megawatts of electricity would be added to the national grid in or before December.
Fashola said this during his inspection tour of Afam Power Plant in Oyigbo local government area of Rivers State as part of federal government power sector recovery programme.
He said the 340 megawatts of electricity would be generated from Afam power plant alone while another 270 megawatts would be generated from the same facility before end of 2018.
According to him, the Afam facility has about 1,000 megawatts of installed capacity which has underperformed due to years of neglect by previous governments, his perfect singsong wherever he goes.
“Afam 1 to 5 power plants is currently producing about 100 megawatts which is as a result of failure to maintain the facility over the years.
“We are here to assess the progress of the work we have been doing in the last 17 to 18 months aimed to get the facility back to its optimum capacity.
“The Afam 5 plant is currently being rehabilitated in collaboration with General Electric to restore 240 megawatts to the facility.
“All the turbine and equipment needed for the project are already in the country while the only challenge we are facing is the access road, logistic and few other things that we came to assess.
“We think that we will add 240 megawatts and another 100 megawatts before December with addition of 276 megawatts in 2018 from Afam power plant alone,” he said.
Fashola said that President Muhammadu Buhari’s administration inherited debt running into billions owed to companies which suppliions owed to companies which supplied gas to power plants in the country.
He said the federal executive council approved N701 billion in March with focus to settle the debts through a power payment assurance programme arrangement with gas company
Fashola further said the federal government was discussing with Shell Petroleum Development Company (SPDC) to note old debts under another ledger for the power payment assurance programme initiative to begin on a new slate so as to ensure availability of gas.
“Now that there is a payment assurance programme we are assuring that every gas that would be supplied to Afam and others would be paid for,” he said.
“General Electric has come in to invest in power while we equally want more investors because there is a lot of gas deposit to tap from.”
Fashola said that government had engaged the World Bank and other development partners aimed to successful implementation of the power sector recovery programme.
He equally held a meeting with the leaders of the Afam community towards addressing their infrastructural challenges like access road and availability of electricity to the community.
Additional Sources:
NTA
Emeka Orjih
The Cable
