The Minister of Power, Works and Housing, Babatunde Fashola, says the Nigerian government’s target of providing 10,000MW of electricity by 2019 is still achievable.
According to a statement by the power ministry, Mr. Fashola said this while fielding questions on a programme on Wednesday, adding that the target could still be realised in spite of the current challenges facing the power sector.
The former Lagos State governor added that all the measures put in place in the Power Sector Recovery Programme by the present administration were geared towards actualising government’s objective of achieving incremental, steady and uninterrupted power supply to Nigerians.
While recalling that the amount of power available on the grid on May 29, 2015, the day President Buhari took office, was 2,690MW, the minister pointed out that on May 29, 2017, the power on grid was 4,014MW.
He explained further that on February 10 2016, for the first time in the history of electricity generation in Nigeria, the nation attained 5,074MW.
Mr. Fashola, however, said that the supply went down soon after as the sector experienced 16 consecutive attacks on gas pipelines, which crippled major gas supply lines such as the Escravos Lagos pipeline.
The Escravos pipeline is however still out, the minister said
