Government Doing ‘Pretty Good’ In Power Sector – Mukan

An Energy Expert, Joshua Mukan, on Tuesday gave President Goodluck Jonathan’s administration a thumbs-up for its efforts towards delivering stable power supply for the citizens.

While giving his assessment of the energy sector on Sunrise Daily, Mukan said: “I think the government is doing pretty good within the time frame they came into power.” In his opinion, the investments and expenditures made toward the sector within the past three years show that “this government has really tried to take (away) the problems of our power sector, uprooting it from the bottom.”

For Nigerians to have access to constant electricity supply, all three energy sub-sectors – power generation, power transmission and power distribution – will have to function efficiently.

“No matter how efficient the power generation sub-sector does, if it is not transmitted very well, or distributed very well, the customer is dissatisfied.”

Mr Mukan, who commented on the efforts of the Power Holding Company of Nigeria (PHCN) despite the dilapidated state of the existing infrastructure prior to the commencement of the power sector reform, stated that the “PHCN did its own best” which failed to yield desired results.

Following the official handover of the power sector to private investors, Mukan warned that it may take time before the impact would be felt by end-users. “The amount of investments that have come in right now, for the power industry, believe me, my understanding is that it may take a little bit of time to materialise.”

He said the government had invested heavily in thermal plants which should not take much time to come on-stream compared to the hydro-electric power plants. He added that it may take a maximum of one year for thermal plants to begin operation.

He stressed the need for the government to invest in other power options, particularly gas.

“Nigeria is now to be one of the biggest world petroleum producing countries and one would imagine that gas should not be a problem in this country. But unfortunately, one of the greatest problems we have to our thermal plants is the availability of gas,” he said.

He highlighted ‘lines of failures’ between gas production and distribution to the thermal plants including vandalism or explosion at a rig.