Power generation in the country will be boosted by 340 megawatts before December. A confident Babatunde Fashola, minister of Power, Works and Housing, said during his inspection tour of Afam Power Plant in Oyibo local government area of Rivers as part of federal government Power Sector Recovery Programme.
According to him, the 340 megawatts of electricity would be generated from Afam power plant alone while another 270 megawatts would be generated from same facility before the end of 2018. The Afam facility, the minister said, has about 1,000 megawatts of installed capacity, which has underperformed due to years of neglect by previous governments.
“Afam 1 to 5 power plants is currently producing about 100 megawatts which is as a result of failure to maintain the facility over the years. We are here to assess the progress of the work we have been doing in the last 17 to 18 months aimed to get the facility back to its optimum capacity,” Fashola explained.
Continuing, he said, “The Afam 5 plant is currently being rehabilitated in collaboration with General Electric to restore 240 megawatts to the facility. All the turbine and equipment needed for the project are already in the country while the only challenge we are facing is the access road, logistic and few other things that we came to assess.”
The minister revealed that General Electric, GE, is currently investing in power and hopes that more investors would be attracted to the power sector because there is a lot of gas deposit to tap from in the country.
He added that the federal government had engaged the World Bank and other development partners towards the successful implementation of the Power Sector Recovery Programme.