The Minister of Power, Works and Housing, Mr. Babatunde Raji Fashola, has disclosed that Nigeria loses about N24 billion monthly to the generator market.
Also, he said that over 300 million litres of diesel are imported and consumed monthly by the generator users in the country.
Fashola said this on Monday during the February 2018 edition of the monthly power sector operators meeting in Abuja.
Represented by the Minister of State for Power, Works and Housing, Mr. Suleiman Hassan, Fashola explained that the monies spent on diesel consumption in Nigeria, buying and maintain diesel generating sets are huge and could be counted as loses to her grid power market.
The minister, however,stated that the government is planning to ensure that up to 2000 megawatts (MW) of stranded power in the system are transmitted and distributed to target consumers who need them instead of having them remain idle.
“Many of them use diesel. Diesel importation has been declining over the last two years. Many are reporting that they ran their generators for noticeably few hours. This is progress. However, Nigerians still consume about 300 million litres of diesel every month and most of this is used to power generators.
“About 75 per cent is imported, putting pressure on scarce foreign exchange. Assuming 40 per cent of the consumption is used for power generation at an average of price of N200 per litre, electricity industry is losing N24 billion every month largely to imported energy.
“At the same time, there is about 2,000MW of electricity generating capacity that is unutilised. Therefore the challenge of the moment before the industry is how to deliver the unutilised capacity to consumers who are willing to pay for it and are already paying dearly for alternatives.
“Problems like this require creative solutions and we don’t have any time to waste. The N701 billion intervention programme is a creative solution that appears to be having the desired effect for stabilising the gas and generation end of the electricity industry.”
