According to the Federal Government, the current epileptic supply of electricity being experienced across many parts of the country is as a result of the massive drop in generated power by 1,000 megawatts in the last one week.
Figures released by the Federal Ministry of Power showed that the country's peak generation as of October 15, 2014 was 3,513.5MW, against a peak demand of 12,800MW.
It, therefore, means that the country is currently generating about 2,500MW.
The Minister of Power, Prof. Chinedu Nebo, speaking during the Presidential Expert Group Meeting on Infrastructure Ranking and Scorecard Roadmap organised by the Nigerian Society of Engineers, attributed the drop to the menace of gas pipeline vandalism.
"Now, look at what vandalism has cost us; nearly 1,000MW of power in the past one week on a daily basis. And this means that every Nigerian is cringing in pain because of the loss." he said.
Earlier, during the meeting proper, Nebo explained that two major gas plants were severely affected and this had warranted the fall in electricity generation.
He said, "Recently within the past week, the Okoloma gas plant has been down due to sabotage, blowing up and vandalism of three of its wellheads, and then robbing Shell of the capacity to deliver over 180mscuf of gas on a daily basis. When you translate this, you are talking of over 720MW of power that is stalled for the past several days.
"So, that really caused our power generation transmission and distribution to dwindle. And the NPDC is also having challenges because of old gas generating plants that quite often the components are either due for repair or for maintenance. And some of these parts are not readily available but these things need to be changed.
"That has also knocked off nearly 80mscuf of gas. When you add this to what we have lost in Shell, you will see why we have dropped 1,000MW in the past several days. That will show you what gas can do and our continued dependence on gas as our major source of energy to our power plants is really a national security issue."
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