The embarrassing state of electricity generation and supply in the country was again brought to the front burner when the Vice Chancellor, University of Lagos, UNILAG, Professor Rahaman Bello revealed that Nigerians are currently generating far more electricity through the use of generators in their homes, corporate offices and industrial places than what the Federal Government is producing through its power stations across the country.
“An estimated 6000 MW is generated via individual and corporate outfits to meet their minimum demands for electricity,” Bello disclosed yesterday, at the Nigerian Institute of Management, NIM, inaugural ‘Nigeria: Arise and Shine’ annual lecture.
Bello further stated that Nigeria was far behind in its 2013 target of 16,000 MW of power generation, blaming it on over-dependence on oil, gas and hydro resources in power generation, at the detriment of other useful resources such as coal, new and renewable energy sources among others.
According to him, in the year 2000, Nigeria was generating as low as 1,500MW; a situation the don blamed on lack of investment in maintenance and expansion programs on existing power plants.
He said: “With efforts on increasing power generating capacity, there has been reasonable sectoral improvement as generation capacity increased to 5,482 MW in 2010. While actual daily generation fluctuated between 2,000 MW – 3,700 MW due to inadequate gas supply.”