The federal government of Nigeria has approved $106.5M loan to Electricity Distribution Companies for the supply of meters.
According to Babatunde Fashola the Minister of Power, Works and Housing; this gesture is part of the government’s power sector recovery programme. Its aim is to ensure uninterrupted generation and distribution of power. He said this in Kano at the 18th Monthly Power Sector Stakeholders Meeting hosted by Kano Electricity Distribution Company.
The approval was directed towards ensuring that every consumer of electricity is provided with a meter.
“It is also aimed at ending the series of complaints by consumers who applied for meter but were not supplied at the appropriate time,” he added.
“The successful implementation of the power sector recovery programme would help resolve the conflict between distributors and consumers over tariff collection,” the minister explained
Increased electricity
“Power generation improved greately in 2017 to 6, 863MW compared to 2016”, Mr. Fashola said. He attributed the reason for the increase to government’s efforts to end rampant vandalism of gas pipelines.
“With this development, we have also noticed increase in the distribution of electricity to consumers across the country.”
Mr. Fashola said, “presently, the Federal Government is generating electricity beyond the carrying capacity of distribution companies; which is a serious challenge to our efforts.”
“It is a serious problem that the distribution companies do not have enough carrying capacity to accommodate more of the generated electricity due to various reasons,” he said.
Also read:Construction of Abuja-Kaduna-Kano gas pipeline in Nigeria to speed up
He further added that the government had embarked on several projects to expand transmission capacity and distribution of power in the country.
Raul Zing,the Chief Operating Officer of KEDCO, said “the company had spent over $5.4M for the construction of power sub-station at Dakata, in Nasarawa Local Government Area”.
“The sub-station, would create 100 small scale industries and supply electricity to over 10,000 houses in the area”, he affirmed.
