By Kola Alhassan
The Minister of Power, Abubakar Aliyu, has said the current power situation in the country is due to gas shortage.
A source said this was disclosed at a Federal Executive Council(FEC) meeting in Abuja on Wednesday.
The minister said efforts were being intensified to address the situation.He noted that Nigeria had the capacity of 8,000Mw on the grid.
He said: “The issue we are currently facing now was not only as a result of the level of water, which most of you captured in your reports; that is part of it; but it is not much from that angle.
“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 into maintenance.”
Abubakar stated that committees had been created to get more mega watts,stressing that the problem was around gas.
He noted that some solutions were underway.
He said: “There is need to have gas contract between generating companies and gas supplies– some are form contracts, some are not.
“We have capacity of 8,000 mega watts – the one on the grid, embedded and captive.
“If you combine all of them, what is happening now is as a result of all these problems that we are encountering and we are on top of it; very soon, we will come out of it.’
The minister disclosed that N5 billion had been approved for his ministry by FEC for those affected in ‘the expansion of the Lagos/Ogun line with six sub-stations’.
