President Bola Tinubu, says his administration is poised to address all the obstacles militating against stable electricity supply in the country.
The President stated this Friday at the ground breaking ceremony of the new 350MW Gwagwalada Independent Thermal Power Plant (Phase 1).
The President in a statement issued Friday by his Special Adviser on Media and Publicity, Ajuri Ngelale, urged the NNPC and its partners to deliver the landmark project within the promised three years completion timeline, insisting that, “three years must be three years.”
Tinubu noted that a swift improvement in the stability and quantum of energy supply will enhance national economic development, which remains a cardinal priority of his administration.
He said his administration will bring solutions to the multifarious challenges across the electric power sector value chain.
The President stressed that this would significantly relieve longstanding problems of suppressed demand and improve the steadiness of peak supply for Nigerians.
He added: “Although the Nigeria Electricity Supply Industry (NESI) is currently characterized by huge supply-gap deficits owing to dilapidated power infrastructure and poor distributions networks, amongst others, this administration is poised to address every power value chain challenge that will significantly relieve the suppressed demand, enhance generation, and improve national peak growth & sustainability far above the hitherto abysmal and unacceptable 5,300MW for over 200 million Nigerians,” the President declared.
“During my electioneering campaign, I made a commitment to Nigerians on providing stable electricity. This is to be achieved by ensuring that we use all available energy sources to boost power generation beyond the current installed capacity of 12,000 megawatts, strengthening the integrity of our transmission infrastructure and ensuring that all distribution bottlenecks are removed.
“We can not form the productive and industrialised economy we need in order to conclusively tackle poverty, and create thousands of high paying manufacturing jobs for our teeming young people, whose creativity and talent we must harness for national development, without reliable electricity,
“We cannot advance and join the rest of the developed world if we remain stuck with our current electricity supply situation and unable to supply the energy our country requires to power a doubling of the size of our Gross Domestic Product within the next decade.”