Power generation rises above 4,000 megawatts

 The Transmission Company of Nigeria (TCN) on Wednesday said that power generation had improved significantly to over 4,000 megawatts.

Dave Ifabiyi, the assistant general manager of TCN, disclosed this in an interview with newsmen in Lagos.

It would be recalled that the minister of power, Chinedu Nebo, on April 11 said that the drop in power generation was due to ongoing maintenance works on installations across the country.

“Power generation, which dropped due to system collapse, has improved to over 4,000 megawatts as at Wednesday.

“We hope that before the week runs out the genera tion will reach a peak of 4,600 megawatts”, he said.

Ifabiyi said that the power generation would reach its peak in Nigeria when all the National Integrated Power Projects (NIPPs) were fully integrated into the national grid.

He attributed the recent increase in the generation of electricity to the privatisation of the sector by the Federal Government.

“Commitment to the power sector privatisation will result in more energy production for consumption”, he said.

Ifabiyi appealed to energy consumers to continue to partner with TCN in protecting electricity installations and forestalling vandalism.

He said that vandalism constituted a major setback to efforts to improve power supply.

Meanwhile, the Nigerian Association for Energy Economics (NAEE) has identified endemic corruption, bad politics, over-dependence on oil, and dearth of research as obstacles to policy implementation in the country.

The association also said that for the country to be an industrialised country by 2030, it needs to generate minimum of 2,000 megawatts yearly to become one of the industrialised countries in the world.

Adeola Adenikinju, president of NAEE, who disclosed this while intimating newsmen about the association’s 2013 international conference coming up from April 21 to 22 in Lagos, said that government policies on the country’s oil, gas and electricity sector have not reflected in the development of the economy.

According to him, Nigeria lacks political will to ensure effective policy implementation in the country’s petroleum and electricity sectors, bemoaning the high level of policy inconsistency in the country.

Adenikinju, who is also professor of economics at the Department of Economics, University of Ibadan, insisted that special interests in the government have consistently ensured that government’s policies for different sectors of the economy come to futility.

Before the government came up with the policy on fuel subsidy, there should have been confidence building on the people, he said.

“We also need sufficient evidence and data to back up our policies. There is dearth of data in the country. We don’t have evidence to guide energy policy reform in Nigeria. Transparency, accountability and accurate reporting are very important.

OLUSOLA BELLO