The Minister of Power, Adebayo Adelabu, says he is aware that there are cartels and cabals in the power sector who believe that making electricity stable in the country will have an adverse effect on their businesses.
While speaking at a function in Lagos on Thursday, May 2, Adelabu said
“I know that there are cartels and there are cabals in this sector who think their business interest will be negatively affected if we have stable electricity. But they are just being myopic, they’re being shortsighted. There are lots of opportunities available in the sector that will compensate for whatever business loss that they think they are experiencing in their current business. So, it is a win-win.
I don’t think stabilising the power sector will render anybody jobless or affect the business interest of anybody. It is a matter of you determining where to be because the business moves. The business world is dynamic. A business that is profitable today may not be profitable tomorrow.
When you see the trend of business moving, you just click into the value chain and it is so huge for everybody such that if local investors are not interested, there are foreign investors interested in this sector”
The Minister also said that power generation increased from 4,200MW in the past few days following the operation of the Zungeru hydroelectric power plant.
“Let me mention that we have started seeing improvements in our generation output. In the past few days, the output has increased from 4,200MW to 4,800MW. What we experienced in February and some parts of March is not desirable when we had very low generation. I just came back from a meeting this morning, where how to make efforts to pay down on our debts to the gencos and the gas companies was discussed. We have made significant progress which I believe will encourage generating companies to ramp up their outputs as we are targeting 6,000MW before the end of the year. What led to the increase in the past few days was the commencement of the operation of Zungeru hydroelectric power plant that just added 625MW to the national grid,” he said.