A Presidential spokesman, Garba Shehu, says that the Buhari administration has surmounted obstacles created by the Jonathan administration to generate 13,000 megawatts of electricity.
Nigeria has been reeling under the burden of power generation and distribution resulting in the unbundling of the power sector into Generation, Distribution and Transmission. Government clung to transmission while private investors bought into generation and distribution.
Speaking during an interview on Sunrise Daily, a Channels Television programme, Friday, Shehu said Government has improved generation by 200 times.
According to him, Government inherited “a reckless privatisation of the power sector, done by the Goodluck Jonathan administration” , but can now generate up to 5,000 megawatts more power.
“The situation on ground constrained the government and the party from delivering as much more than what we have. As we speak today we have doubled power availability in the country,” he said.
“In terms of generation, it has improved 200 times. We have the capacity to generate more than 13,000 of power. The uptake is up to 5,000 as we speak now. That is not the best but it’s an improvement on the 2,500 megawatts that we inherited.
“We aspire to do 20,000 or 30,000 megawatts of power. We haven’t done that but we have launched 19,000 availability. It’s remarkable, why don’t we look inwards and use out the 13,000 that are available. A lot of power is generated and wasted in some cases.
“This Government inherited a reckless privatisation process, which the president said in the interview that it was largely driven by the need to gratify political interest.”
Considering the still very epileptic power supply, not a few Nigerians doubt Garba’s claim.”
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