Politically speaking, the honorable Minister of Power, Adebayo Adelabu, lamented the recent drop in power generation and attributed it to the issue of gas constraint at thermal stations. The Minister made this disclosure during his visit to power facilities in Olorunshogo, Ogun State, and Omotosho, Ondo State.

He is not farther from the truth because thermal stations are unable to run up to fifty percent of their machines due largely to gas constraint as the volume of gas received from their gas Supplier is not sufficient to operate their available generators, which is a situation akin to having functional vehicles without fuel to drive same.

It is not pleasant to have healthy, functional generators but unable to use them for power generation so as to satisfy the domestic and industrial electricity need of Nigerians. The truth is that the situation has become a cyclical and perennial issue as thermal stations that ought to augment generation shortfall from hydro stations during the dry season end up not having gas to operate their machines.

The situation could be linked to inadequate gas infrastructure and the fact that most of these stations don’t have active Gas Sales Agreement with the gas Supplier. A good example is that most of the National Integrated Power Projects (NIPP) stations have no gas supply agreement with their gas Suppliers and this has led to a situation where available machines cannot be operated due to low gas pressure.

While the honorable Minister has promised to tackle the problem headlong by saying that “to tackle the gas supply and liquidity challenges, I’ve decided to form a committee involving all stakeholders. Together, we will work on recommendations to resolve these issues and ensure a more reliable and consistent power supply for our citizens”, the committee should also consider among other recommendations the need for an urgent review of the domestic national gas policy to prioritize gas supply for local consumption.

However, in the long-run a more enduring solution would be to diversify the generation mix.

Presently, Nigeria has only two sources of generation that are thermal and gas even when the country has an abundance of other power generation sources that include solar, wind, coal, biomass etc.

In order to eradicate this seemingly intractable problem, the honorable Minister should encourage the diversification of the generation mix to give room for alternative sources whenever there is shortfall in one area and create flexibility of choices to the operators of the grid.