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The Minister of Power, Abubakar Aliyu, has said that the national grid, which collapsed a few days ago, has now been restored to full operation.
The minister disclosed this during a briefing after the Federal Executive Council (FEC) meeting presided over by the Vice President, Professor Yemi Osinbajo on Wednesday, March 16, 2022.
He said the current energy crisis confronting some key sectors of the economy contributed to the challenges in the power sector.
Aliyu identified the shortage of gas and maintenance of generators, as well as the fuel situation in the country, as some of the factors that contributed to the problem with the national grid.
According to him, routine maintenance of power generating plants had also contributed to the current power outages in the country,
He said, “The more reason we are facing the situation now is as a result of the shortage of gas and some of the generators have to go to maintenance.
“It is a scheduled maintenance and it is supposed to be scheduled outage, but we had not envisaged that we will have issues around vandalization of pipelines, which the NNPC has addressed as you can see evidently everywhere, aviation fuel, and petrol in the filling stations. It is a combination of many factors that compounded the problem we are having on the grid.
“We have recovered the grid now. The grid is back and we are trying to get more megawatts to push on the grid. We have set up small committees all geared towards getting more megawatts to put on the grid. Basically, the problem around gas. You need to have gas contract between generating companies and gas suppliers- some are form contracts, some are not. We are looking into this and have proffered some solutions in some few days to mature.”
The minister also disclosed that his ministry in collaboration with relevant agencies is working to stop the vandalization of pipelines that supply gas to power plants.
He added that the NNPC and other gas suppliers are working relentlessly to restore gas supply for optimum power supply.
On behalf of the Federal Government, the minister urged Nigerians to support the government while his ministry makes efforts to increase and stabilise electricity supply across the country.