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Power outages: Bear with us – NDPHC begs Nigerians

By on February 5, 2014

The Federal Government on Monday appealed to Nigerians currently experiencing epileptic power supply in many parts of the country to bear with it while it worked hard to fix the problem.

The Managing Director, Niger Delta Power Holding Company, Mr. James Olotu, made the appeal while speaking with State House correspondents after a meeting on the power sector chaired by Vice-President Namadi Sambo.

Olotu attributed the challenge to vandalism of some gas pipelines, leading to shortage of gas to some of the power plants.

He, however, said reports available to him indicated that electricity supply had improved in some parts of the country.

Olotu said, “It has been indicated that power supply has improved. There are areas where they say that their generators have not been working for quite a while now. That is a sure sign that power supply has improved.

“But we have areas where we have some challenges bordering on vandalism of gas pipelines as a result of which our gas supply has been a little bit restricted.

“We are looking at these problems but Nigerians should just bear with us, while we put the problems on the table and find permanent solutions to them.

“Let me also add that the private owners took over these facilities on November 1, 2013. It is true that having lived in darkness for a long time, people are in a hurry to see that there is immediate improvement. But let us give the owners an opportunity (to fix the problem). That is also why we are trying to create opportunities for them to borrow money at affordable rates.”

The Permanent Secretary, Ministry of Power, Mr. Godknows Igali, said the government had gone far with the process of planning, saying more funds needed to be injected into the sector.

“We need long term concessionary funding so that we can maintain not only the integrity of the system, but add more value by way of upgrading and modernising some of the assets that we have.”

 

 

[Punch]