Politically speaking, GENCO is the acronym for the generating companies in Nigeria and was derived after the unbundling of the power sector. They are licensed with the responsibility to produce electricity for both commercial, industrial and residential users in the country and presently, we have largely two generation mix of hydro and thermal stations.
GENCOs have been doing their best since they came on board and it can be argued that the huge investment recorded by these plants is one of the gains of the 2013 privatization program of the President Goodluck Jonathan’s administration as many stations have resuscitated or upgraded some of their machines that were not available before the exercise. Egbin revived ST6; Kainji restored their 1G5 while other stations like Transcorp, Ughelli upgraded GT15 and Geregu phase 1 carried out massive maintenance of their generators.
With these achievements, more still need to be done to increase available generation capacity. A major constraint to actualizing this lofty dream is the illiquidity in the sector with the level of revenue collection for energy delivered still very low.
The table below represents the percentage machine availability of installed units versus available units at 0600Hrs of some selected dates.
 Table Showing Percentage Machine Availability of Installed Units versus Available Machines

S/N

DATE

NO OF UNITS INSTALLED

AVAILABLE UNITS

PERCENTAGE MACHINE AVAILABILITY (%)

1

16/02/2023

162

66

40.7

2

18/02/2023

162

63

38.8

3

19/02/2023

162

65

40.1

4

24/02/2023

162

63

38.8

5

26/02/2023

162

64

39.5

6

27/02/2023

162

67

41.3

7

20/03/2023

162

64

39.5

8

21/03/2023

162

66

40.7

9

25/03/2023

162

65

40.1

10

27/03/2023

162

58

35.8

11

28/03/2023

162

61

37.7

12

29/03/2023

162

65

40.1

13

03/04.2023

162

64

39.5

14

05/04/2023

162

60

37.0

15

06/04/2023

162

62

38.3

16

07/04/2023

162

63

38.8

17

08/04/2023

162

60

37.0

18

09/04/2023

162

62

38.3

19

10/04/2023

162

62

38.3

20

11/04/2023

162

65

40.1


The table above shows that out of the 162 installed generators in the power sector in Nigeria, the percentage availability of installed machines versus available machines is below 50% and there are many technical reasons for this situation. While some of the installed machines are out on preventive maintenance and general overhaul, others are out for reasons like faults, water management, gas constraints, pre-commissioning tests etc. 
Since GENCOs are mandated to generate adequate electricity for the country, it will be good if they put in more efforts to make more machines available to effectively carryout this important responsibility.  
The government have their own role to play towards the improvement of the percentage machine availability of installed machines versus available units by way of assisting the sector to recover debts owed by MDAs and other government parastatals and also reviewing the national gas policy to improve gas availability for local use, which will in turn lead to increase in electricity generation, reduce unemployment and improvement in the quality of life of Nigerians.