Babatunde Fashola
has denied categorically that he promised Nigerians a better power supply as he
heaps blame of the epileptic power supply on the vandalization of pipelines.
Minister of Power,
Works and Housing, Babatunde Fashola, has denied making promises of better
power supply.
He said this in an
interview with Channels TV. Fashola said that his plans did not consider
vandalization of pipelines because he was always focused on power generation.
“Let us be careful
when you claim that I made promises because I am ever so conscious of the
things that I say and I believe that if I recollect correctly, it was when I
was unveiling my ministries, probably sometime late December last year, and it
is unlike me to make promises on things I don’t control,” he said.
“If you check the
words I used, I shared with you our plans if it worked and where we will be.
Those promises don’t factor in vandalisation. You know when they teach you how
to generate power in school, they don’t teach you how to deal with
vandalisation.
“When they teach you
how to do banking, they don’t teach you about round-tripping so those are the
assumptions that things would remain normal. There is no nation in the world
that wants electricity that vandalizes the assets that produce electricity; it
doesn’t make any sense.
“I can control what
my team does, I can promise you what my team efforts will produce but I can’t
control behaviour that is counterproductive. Those pipelines are national
assets; they were built with our common wealth, the people whose territories it
passes are custodians of it.
“Let us assume that
the people who are also custodians of Jebba, Kainji and Shiroro dams go to
break them down because they are angry, then who gets power?”
Speaking further,
Fashola said that the short-term objective of the ministry is to increase
production to enable better power supply.
“We want to get
incremental power first, short-term objective. Energy anywhere, we can get it
because the energy is not enough.
“Five thousand
megawatts, which was our peak production in February this year, is not enough
for a country of over 100 million people. We will get it from everywhere — from
gas, solar, hydro from nuclear and biomass.” source
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