- Nigeria adds at least 4000 megawatts of power to its generation capacity.
- Nigeria is working with the German government to increase the generation and supply of power.
The Minister of Power, Engr. Abubakar Aliyu recently claimed that Nigeria had added at least 4000 megawatts of power to its generation capacity, bringing the total to 22,000 megawatts of its generated power available in the country.
The ministry has also raised transmission capacity with an additional 6000 megawatts of power, thereby strengthening Nigeria’s transmission company’s capacity to transmit more power across the country.
The minister said, however, that despite the increased generation, the TCN and the distribution companies (DisCos) cannot receive and deliver all the generated power to the homes of Nigerians and that something was urgently being done to improve the situation.
Engr. Aliyu explained that Nigeria was working closely with the German government to increase the generation and supply of power across the country using €2 million loan to raise generation capacity in three phases.
Under concessionary terms of the loan, according to the minister, Siemens is to rehabilitate electricity infrastructure from 7000 Megawatts to 11,000 Megawatts and from there to 25,000 Megawatts. However, he regretted that the DisCos in the country do not have the capacity to absorb and distribute what the TCN is sending out.
The minister explained that the boards of the DisCos were sacked due to the inability to deliver based on the terms of the agreement they signed with the federal government of Nigeria.
According to him, the boards of the DisCos have been replaced by the banks that provided the cash for the distribution firms to buy the electricity companies.