FG blames power failure on liquidity, vandalism

The Federal Government has blamed the collapse of power supply on liquidity problem and vandalism of pipelines. Minister of Power, Works and Housing, Babatunde Fashola, said this yesterday while briefing State House correspondents on the outcome of the Federal Executive Council meeting presided over by Acting President Yemi Osinbajo.

The minister disclosed that gas suppliers had not been fully paid; the situation, he noted, was causing “back and forth” between Distribution Companies and Generation Companies.

He said he had been meeting with gas suppliers to see how some of the debts could be paid off, while the government fixed other problems.

“As I continue to say, it is not technical, but financial, vandalism of pipelines. It is not technical, people are destroying, they are hungry,” Fashola stated.

“If you can’t produce oil, you cannot take the gas. You’ve seen what we’ve been doing in increasing the capacity in firing transmission, but if we don’t have fuel to fire the plants, that is the reason. What then happens on the grid is that once it goes below 3,000 MW, it becomes unstable.

“It’s like in your house when you’ve surges and your circuit breakers trip to protect the system. So, once it falls below a certain threshold, you then have those trip offs that are in a sense almost necessary to protect the entire system. So, what then happen is startups, we do black starts from various power plants,” he said.