Adebayo Adelabu, the Minister of Power, has noted that complaints about rising petrol prices have significantly decreased due to an improvement in electricity supply.
Speaking on Tuesday at the 2024
Nigeria Energy Exhibition and Conference in Lagos, Adelabu highlighted how
better electricity supply has reduced the public’s need to rely on petrol for
generators.
“People don’t need to buy
petrol again as much as they used to do for them to have power. That’s why the
noise is even at this level.
“If they had to be going to the
filling stations to buy N1,000 per litre of petrol to generate electricity, we
would have even had louder noise from the public,” he said.
Adelabu also discussed Lagos
state's policy to replace 1 million generators in one year.
“We must replace all the
generators,” he added.
Reflecting on Nigeria’s power
generation, the minister lamented the slow growth.
“It took us almost 40 years to
generate additional 2000MW from the 2000MW milestone we achieved in 1984,” he
stated. “Now, we have taken it to an average of 5000MW, with a peak of 5,527MW
on the third of September.”
Looking ahead, Adelabu
projected that by the end of 2024, the Nigerian Electric Supply Industry (NESI)
could increase its revenue to N2 trillion from the N1 trillion generated in
2023.
“We will achieve nothing less
than N2 trillion for the industry in 2024,” he said.
The minister also spoke on
resolving legacy debts.
“About N1.3 trillion was being
owed to power generating companies (GenCos) and $1.3 billion to gas suppliers,”
he explained.
Adelabu revealed the
government’s focus on financial sustainability, noting the mobilization of over
$1 billion to attract additional investments.
Initiatives like the $750
million World Bank scheme, scheduled to commence next month, aim to deliver
electricity to over 2.5 million people.
“We cannot achieve energy
expansion with government spending alone... the capital must come through the
private sector,” he concluded.
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