Minister of Power, Adebayo Adelabu, says most Nigerians have stopped complaining about the high cost of petrol because they no longer rely solely on their generators for electricity.
According to THISDAY, the minister stated this in Lagos, during his keynote address at the ongoing 2024 edition of the Nigeria Energy Exhibition and Conference, with the theme, “Breaking Barriers in the New Energy Era: Clean, Reliable and Sustainable”.
Last week, the pump price of petrol rose to N998 and N1,030 per litre after Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited (NNPCL) announced the end of the sole off-taker arrangement with the Dangote Refinery.
This led to the sharp increase in the cost of transportation, food items and other essential household commodities in the country.
But speaking at the conference, the minister said the people were not making a loud noise about the increase as they didn’t have to buy petrol at N1000 to power their generators before enjoying electricity.
According to Adelabu, the federal government intended to replace all the generators in the country in line with the Lagos State Policy of Replacement of 1 Million Generators in One Year.
He said: “People don’t need to buy petrol again as much as they used to do for them to have power. That’s why the noise is even at this level. If they had to be going to the filling stations to buy N1000 per litre of petrol to generate electricity, we would have even had louder noise from the public.
“So, what we intend to do is to make sure that all the generators are replaced in line with Lagos State Policy of Replacement of 1 Million Generators in One Year. I saw that. We must replace all the generators.”
While reflecting on Nigeria’s power generation, the minister lamented the slow growth, saying: “It took us almost 40 years to generate additional 2000MW from the 2000MW milestone we achieved in 1984. Now, we have taken it to an average of 5000MW, with a peak of 5,527MW on the third of September. But we are not deterred. If the last best time was 50 years ago, I believe the next best time is today, and this must wake us up. So, it’s an issue I don’t like to remember”, he said.