 |
| Executive Director, ANED, Mr. Sunday Oduntan |
Electricity distribution companies in
the country under the aegis of Association of Nigeria Electricity Distributors
(ANED) have said that the current drastic dropped in electricity supply in
Nigeria will continue as long as gas pipelines vandalism, low generation and
other typical challenges are not addressed.
Nigeria’s power generation collapsed completely on Thursday
last week at exactly 12.58pm to zero megawatts, and this persisted for about
three hours.
Speaking exclusively with TOTALNEWS247, the Executive
Director, ANED, Mr. Sunday Oduntan said that the major challenges that have been militating
against Nigerians from getting uninterrupted power supply are gas pipelines
vandalism, low generation, funding gap and energy theft.
While attributing the last week generation collapsed to
vandalism of gas pipelines that supply power stations in the country which he
said was cried out by miscreant in the Niger Delta region, Oduntan noted that
there will never be electricity if this act continued.
“Every time the vandals vandalise our
pipelines they denied gas to go into the power stations and when there is no
gas there is no way we can generate any electricity. Those who perpetrated the
act are Nigerians. They are people from the Niger Delta,” he explained.
According to him,” the secondly reasons
why we have drastic dropped in supply is that what we are generating is too
low. Presently we are generating averagely 5000megawatt when we need about
20,000megawatt. If you have 20 children
and the food you have at home is only enough for five children. That means only
five children can eat at a time and the other 15 children will starved. Unless
we generate more and stop vandalism in the Niger Delta region there will
continue to be darkness. It has nothing to do with us. We can only distribute
what have been generated and send to us.”
He also said that funding gap is
another challenge the sector is battling with. Oduntan explained that; “if a
Disco spend N3.5billion to buy electricity in a month, the company would only
able to collect N2 billion. Who will account for the losses of that N1.5
billion? The gas suppliers, generation companies will want their money. How do
you pay them if the collection loses are too high.”
While lamenting on the rate at which
Nigerians engage in energy theft, he said that; “everywhere in the country
today people are steeling or tapping energy without paying for it. Unless we
come together and be resolute, the problems of the sector will never be solved.
Nigerians should make it their obligations that in every month their first priority
after collecting their salaries is to pay their bills. Nigerians have the
culture of nonpayment. Even the government owes us N50billion.”
He appealed to Nigerians to change
their habit of nonpayment, adding that they only pay 40 percent of their bills.
According to him, government needs to
up their game in other to stop vandalism, stating that they need to gather more
intelligent and go after the vandals, urging Nigerians to join hands with the
government to solve the problem of the power sector.
Meanwhile, the electricity generated by
all the generations’ companies is 3,651.46 megawatt according to
data obtained by our correspondent from Federal Ministry of Energy.
According to the data, peak generation
stands at 3,857.4mw, energy sent out is 3,569.47mw
and peak demand forecast remains 12,800mw.
No comments:
Post a Comment