The Minister of Power, Works and Housing, Babatunde Fashola, has said the Federal Government will be coming out soon with new regulations for the power sector so as to ensure improved power supply in the country.
The former governor of Lagos State disclosed this on Monday while featuring on TVC’s programme, #ThisMorning.
Fashola who expressed satisfaction with the Private sector’s involvement in the sector, said this is because nothing in the recent Electricity Power Sector Reforms Act, EPSRA, deters states from doing such. He, however, urged states that are interested in generating their power to obtain the necessary permit and licenses from the Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission (NERC) in respect of the areas they want to invest in.
“ I have heard statements made that State governments should be allowed to produce their own power. The truth is that, there is nothing in the Electricity Power Sector Reforms Act that stops any state from doing so, but the only thing they must do is to get NERC’s permit and licenses depending on whatever categorization of investment they want to do whether it is distribution or generation.”
”The solution to the problem associated with distribution of meters is to open up metering business. I will support any state that wants to get involved in generating and also distributing power under its own arrangement, just as I have done for the people at Odogunya Ikorodu area. For the first time, we have spent more than N1trillion on capital projects but that is still not enough.”
Fashola stated further that: ”There is a massive ongoing rural electrification projects to connect most of the undeserved areas across the country, and our power generation, transmission and distribution will get better day-by-day.” Meanwhile, he made it clear to those accusing on being to soft on DISCOS, that it is not his job to sanction power distribution or generation companies but their regulators.
Speaking on the state of federal roads across the country, Fashola said: ”we have ongoing road projects across the country, some of which are Lagos-Ibadan road, Jebba , Mokwa, Ilorin, Ogbomoso, Warri, Benin road, Port-Harcourt, Enugu, Aba, Borno. We have contractors on these roads, and that’s a good flow of capital.”
Commenting on progress made so far on housing, the minister hinted that Nigeria will soon have a better privatization program, in form of Cooperative society that will deliver affordable housing units for the low income earners. He however stressed that his priority is not about the number of housing units he was able to build, but how robust the programme is, to continue after leaving office.
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