Posted by By LOUIS IBA on
President Umaru Yar'adua has earmarked a whooping N94billion to the power and gas sectors in the 2009 budget in a bid to stem the crisis in these two sectors and ensure adequate and uninterrupted supplies of gas and electricity to domestic users.
President Umaru Yar'adua has earmarked a whooping N94billion to the power and gas sectors in the 2009 budget in a bid to stem the crisis in these two sectors and ensure adequate and uninterrupted supplies of gas and electricity to domestic users.
In the last eight years, output from two sectors ( despite the billions of dollars earmarked by the former government of President Olusegun Obasanjo) had remained abysmally poor with officials of the Power Holding Company of Nigeria (PHCN) heaping blames on their inability to access gas to power thermal plants for the worsening power supplies in the country.
The result has been a nation in darkness, especially for the majority who cannot afford the high cost of alternative source of power generation like petrol and diesel powered generators.
Yar'adua in the 2009 budget placed the two sectors amongst his top priority saying the target was to empower the NNPC to boost gas supplies to the domestic market in such a manner that power generation would be upped from the current figure of less than 2,000megawatts to above 6,000megawatts by the end of 2009.
'We are increasing investment in power generation by enhancing NNPC's ability to provide 1.2billion standard cubic feet (SCF) of gas to the domestic market, so as to ensure that this Administration can deliver 6000 MW of power by the end of 2009,' Yar'adua said.
In the breakdown for the allocations to the two sectors, N3.5billion had been budgeted for the Mambilla Hydro-electric power generation project; N21.5billion for other generation projects, including N6.5billion for the completion of the Niger Delta Power Holding Company's NIPP projects); N32billion for transmission projects; and N19.25billion for distribution projects.
In the same vein, the government voted N903.9million for the Trans-Sahara Gas Pipeline; N6.7billion for the Calabar-Umuahia-Ajaokuta Gas Pipeline; N10.3billion for the Ajaokuta-Abuja-Kano pipeline; and N1.1billion for the Gas Supply Pipeline to PHCN Delta IV thermal plant.
It will not be the first time that the governments will earmark huge figures for the two sectors. In fact, the power sector alone is believed to have gulped about $16billion during Obasanjo's reign as president, yet rather than improvements, power generation and supply kept declining, creating discomfort not only to residential users, but to international and local manufacturers who found it hard to break even or remain in business - competing with imported brands - while relying on diesel or petrol generators to power their plants.
Till date, none of the new Independent Power Projects (IPPs) bankrolled by the government has effectively come on stream to contribute to the national grid, just as most of the private investors granted licences to float IPPs have failed to bring their projects on stream.
Stable power remains critical to the socio-economic growth and prosperity of any nation, and in as much as the fresh investments of N94billion in the gas and power sectors by the Yar'adua's administration is welcomed, care must be taken in the execution of all the earmarked projects to ensure the judicious use of the monies and timely completion of the projects in a manner that will yield dividends to Nigerians. Results is what the people need, although 6,000megawatts is grossly insufficient to meet the needs of more than 140million Nigerians.