Posted by By Louis Achi on
Taking responsibility for the three-week old drastic drop in power distribution by the National Electric Power Authority (NEPA), Minister of Power and Steel, Senator Liyel Imoke has appologised to Nigerians and urged them not to despair as reprieve was around the corner.
Taking responsibility for the three-week old drastic drop in power distribution by the National Electric Power Authority (NEPA), Minister of Power and Steel, Senator Liyel Imoke has appologised to Nigerians and urged them not to despair as reprieve was around the corner.
Speaking in a chat with THISDAY, yesterday in Lagos, Imoke said that beyond the lower water levels recorded at hydro-generating centres, machine failures also helped to agravate the situation, a scenario that has stressed consumers nationwide.
According to the power and steel boss, "I want to use this opportunity to appologise to Nigerians for a very poor performance by NEPA over the past three weeks. We had some technical problems that went beyond the lower water levels at the power stations.
"We are working with machines and sometimes the machines fail. We have experienced failures of recent. So beyond the excuse that we have lower water levels, we also had some technical problems which we are addressing and I believe that by next week our service delivery will improve substantially."
Urging Nigerians to be patient, Imoke explained that certain programmes to bring about change in the sector have been put in place, adding that heavy investments were being made in the sector and that they would yield returns.
His words: "In terms of what we are doing at NEPA, you can see clearly that we have put certain programmes on the ground, investments are being made into the power sector.
"We expect that those investments will yield returns. These returns may not come overnight. So we want to appeal to Nigerians to be a bit patient.
"We must get them to appreciate the fact that investments made in the power sector do not yield returns for upwards of 30 months. We want to assure them that as we are going into 2005, 2006 and 2007, we are going to see significant improvement in our performance as far as power supply is concerned."
Stating that the power sector is the most capital intensive in the world, he said it could not be overemphasised that the power sector in Nigeria was neglected for 20 years and needed substantial investment to get anything out of it.
"We can not overemphasised the fact that the power sector in Nigeria was neglected for 20 years. We must invest in it to get anything out of it and this must be substantial."
Noting that the allocation for 2005 for NEPA is about N65 billion, he stated that it was clearly the highest allocation ever made to the power sector by any administration.
"I think if properly applied, we should be able to get substantial improvement in our service delivery in the next couple of years," he further said.