The Minister of Power, Works and Housing,
Mr. Babatunde Fashola, said on Tuesday that
only 50 of Nigeria’s 140 power generating
turbines are currently working and generating
electricity because there is no gas to power
some of them that use gas.
Fashola spoke on Tuesday on a Channels
Television Talkshow, Sunrise, which THISDAY
monitored in Abuja.
He stated that even though the country has
140 power turbines installed in its electricity
system, majority of them are gas fired.
He said before now, 78 of the turbines were
generating power but the number went down
to 50 as gas supply to most of them
continued to drop.
“The first problem is that there is not enough
power. Today we have 25 power plants. Three,
Shiroro, Jebba, Kainji, are hydro plants, while
the rest are gas-fired plants.
“We have an installed capacity of about
12,000 megawatts. Also, we have about 140
turbines installed, but available capacity is
about 8,000MW,” he said.
He further said: “Now the power being
generated comes from only about 78 turbines
out of 140 and they are largely fired by gas.
“Now that power has gone down because we
had gas outage due to the failure of a
pipeline. And as a result of that, 78 turbines
dropped to maybe about 50 because there
was no gas.”
The minister however noted that the current
challenges affecting power production in the
country can be resolved, adding that the
ministry of petroleum resources has agreed to
provide more gas for power generation.
(Source: THIS DAY)
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