The immediate past Minister of Power, Prof. Chinedu Nebo has disclosed that gas supply and vandalism is the main reason why former President Goodluck Jonathan’s stable electricity programme was thwarted.
Nebo during a post-service assessment interview in Abuja said that plans of the immediate past government to generate over 5000 megawatts (MW) of electricity in 2014 and subsequently add more capacity were destroyed by the inability of gas producers to meet the demands of gas power plants in the country.
Nebo said “I hate excuses. But I would say that commitments were made to give us gas, but we haven’t seen gas. It is just as simple as that.
“It is very painful. I blame a lot on vandalism, but I also blame the oil companies for what I consider to be hypocrisy. They have been hypocritical with this whole issue of making sure that we have gas and bringing us out of darkness and so on.
“These turbines are ready to go. Some of them are operating at 30 per cent capacity. In a place where you have three to four turbines and only one is at work because there is no gas supply.”
“I think I feel so sad about this because if we had gas going to these turbines, every Nigerian would have been hailing President Jonathan today. But unfortunately, there was no gas.
When gas was produced, even more, you find a preference by the oil companies to give gas to the industries instead of to power generation. It is still happening today, whereas the profile for gas to power continues decreasing, the profile of gas to industries is on the increase. Something is wrong.”
In his advice to the new government, he said “This new government should take a cue and make sure that NNPC does what it ought to do to make sure that there is enough gas going to the power plants.”
“It is very critical. If the new administration does not do that, Nigerians are going to keep suffering in darkness. I do hope that the administration would also fight vandalism and bring the vandals to their knees. If we don’t do that, we are still going to have a problem because a situation where every two weeks the pipelines are blown up and it takes two weeks to fix them is not the best.”