Nigeria is going to generate 6,000 megawatts of electricity before the end of this year, the Federal Government declared on Friday.
Nigeria’s power generation currently hovers around 4,000 and 4,500MW for a population of about 200 million people. On Friday, for instance, the country’s power generation was 4,553.82MW as of 6 am that day.
During his ministerial address in Abuja on Friday, while presenting achievements of his ministry since President Bola Tinubu assumed office on May 29, 2023, the Minister of Power, Adebayo Adelabu, said the country’s power generation rose to 5,000MW on May 3, 2024, being the first time in three years.
Adelabu vowed that power generation in Nigeria would hit 6,000MW before the end of this year, going by the improvements in the sector in the last year.
“On generation capacity, let me say that 5,000MW of power was achieved in May 2024 for the first time in three years. Precisely on May 3, 2024, we generated, transmitted and distributed 5,003.45MW of power.
“We all know where we were before now. But we rose to the occasion and changed the situation for the better, and our target is to achieve 6,000MW before the end of this year, which will be the first time in the history of Nigeria, and it will happen,” the minister stated.
He said there have been a series of infrastructural upgrades in the last year, pointing out that the ongoing Presidential Power Initiative was one of the programmes that ensured the improvement of power assets in Nigeria.
“In November 2023, President Tinubu and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz witnessed the signing of an accelerated performance agreement aimed at expediting the implementation of the Presidential Power Initiative to improve electricity supply in Nigeria.
“The implementation of the pilot phase has resulted in infrastructure improvement which includes additional grid evacuation capacity by 2,230MW and an additional 183MW to be commissioned by the end of June 2024, Adelabu stated.
He said the government was in the process of finalising contracts for Phase 1 of the Presidential Power Initiative.
“There is also the rehabilitation of 15 brownfield substations with an expected contract date of August 2024. There is the construction of 22 green field substations with an expected contract date of October 2024,” he said.
On metering, Adelabu said the presidential metering initiative had been scheduled to provide two million meters per annum for the next five years to improve the sector’s liquidity and limit estimated billing.
Olaitan Ibrahim