The Senate Committee on Power, yesterday expressed its preparedness to partner with the Ministry of Power in ensuring that the various power plants in the country are repositioned to improve power supply to Nigerians.
Chairman of the committee, Senator Philip Aduda, gave the assurance at the Shiroro Hydroelectric plant Plc in Minna, Niger State, after inspecting power control, generation and distribution plants at Shiroro Dam.
Aduda,? paid an unscheduled visit to Shiroro Hydro power station and dam following the outbreak of power supply to the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) and its environs undertook a tour of the facilities to ascertain the problems they are facing.
According to him, the federal government was determined to ensure that the problem of power failure becomes a thing of past. “We are not going to relax from now on because Nigerians will not accept any more excuses as the expectations are high. So that is why I decided on my own to come down to Shiroro first.”
Amid challenges of shortage of gas supply to the power generation plants, funding, obsolete equipment and transmission line redundancy, Aduda promised that his committee would soon come out with a recommendation to the federal government for immediate action so that the country would have power sufficiency within the shortest time.
The senator called on the Nigeria Electricity Regulatory Commission (NERC) to charge private companies that it issued licences to put infrastructures on ground to enable the country generate more megawatts.
He advised the government to start thinking on how to explore other forms of power generation. “Let us begin to look at other sources of energy, we did not have to pin ourselves to hydro.
Government can begin to look through the Benue trucks to Enugu where we have coal deposit. They can bring in solar, gas power or turbine power, or any other equipment that will generate the hundreds of thousands of megawatts to generate power.”
In his remarks, the general manager, Shiroro Transmission Region, Engr Abubakar Atiku, said he was delighted for the visit of the senator who has come to see things for himself, the problems they are facing.
He stated that the management of Shiroro Dam is faced with budgetary problem, adding that if fund is made available, the Hydro power station can contain more additional 150 megawatts to the 450 megawatts they have presently.
According to him, they are supposed to overhaul the five units they have in every five years, but it was just last year that they were able to get money to overhaul just one unit which has packed up since 2008.