The federal government will spend over N3 billion on fuel, generators and plants across 602 ministries, departments and agencies this year.
These figures do not include money voted by the agencies for payment of electricity charges during the year.
Analysis of 2019 budget proposals has shown that only four federal agencies have zero allocation for plants and generators.
This huge figures for generators and fuel is coming at time the Minister of Power, Works and Housing, Mr Babatunde Fashola is saying that power supply had improved and that there was more power coming to the grid this year.
Fashola on assumption of office in November 2015 unveiled his “incremental, steady and uninterrupted power” agenda and last Saturday night said government had walked the talk and “fulfilled its promise.”
Statistics from the Transmission Company of Nigeria (TCN) indicates that peak electricity generation on Wednesday was 3,806 megawatts (MW), falling from the 4,687MW attained on January 1, 2019.
While the generation company capacity was at 11,000MW, what GenCos can actually deliver remains at 7,139MW; the capacity for the transmission of generated electricity was 7,500MW, but the network operational capacity for distributing the electricity is 6,500MW.
Despite this shortcoming, the national peak demand forecast is pegged at 23,000MW which is deemed to create the steady, uninterrupted power supply that Fashola seeks to happen.
But speaking on the fulfilled promise of boosting electricity, the minister who spoke on NTA last weekend said, “When one takes stock, the point to make is that we have walked our talk. We have fulfilled our promise. It is important to benchmark power not just as power electricity itself.
“It is an economic enabler and that is why it is no accident that this government is committed to ensuring that first there is incremental power, then steady power and inevitably uninterrupted power because we are committed to enabling business to be competitive, efficient, to sustain growth and to produce jobs,” Fashola said.
