‘I Never Promised Better Power Supply,’ Fashola Tells Nigerians

Minister of Power, Works and Housing, Babatunde Fashola, has denied making promises of better power supply. Speaking in an interview with Channels television, 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?”

The former governor of Lagos state also 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.”