Fashola, Amosun urge FG to tackle power supply

Lagos state Governor, Mr. Babatunde Fashola, has said that the nation’s economy would not only blossom, but impact more meaningfully on the lives of the citizens if the power sector is revamped.
Speaking yesterday at the Lagos Economic Summit, also known as Ehingbeti 2014, held at the Eko Hotels and Suites, Lagos, the governor also said the country’s problems were not insurmountable and challenged the federal government to prove that that the recent figures that placed the Nigerian economy as the biggest in Africa and 26th largest in the world were based on current realities.

“The place to start will be first to express an understanding and concurrence to get economic figures right. So if the Nigerian economy has been stated on 1990 figures, it makes imminent common sense to restate them on much more contemporary figures that capture sectors that were hitherto omitted like telecommunications, entertainment, arts, music, and so on. That said the reality is that size only matters if it is efficient size.

“If it’s big and sub-optimal or inefficient, it really doesn’t achieve the purpose. How to put that size to work is really the key. Power demand here (in Lagos) is in the region of 10,000 megawatts and more. At a snapshot and an economy that is giving 25 per cent to the gross domestic with 1, 000 and below megawatts just shows what we can unleash if we ramp up power supply,” he said.
He said the state government had embarked on a number of initiatives to improve power supply in the state.
Part of the initiatives, he said include the establishment of Island, Adiyan and Alausa Independent Power Plants.
Also speaking, his Ogun state counterpart, Senator Ibikunle Amosun, said the nation must be ready to tackle the problem of power supply to aid manufacturing industry if indeed it wanted to witness impactful economic growth, adding that the figures of its GDP was not driven by the manufacturing sector.