Nigeria is a great country, stop running it down" - Minister for works, housing & Power, Fashola tells citizens (Details, pics)

The power, housing and works minister, Babatunde Fashola, has pleaded with citizens of Nigeria to stop running down the country while arguing that despite some challenges, it could still be compared favourably with other countries of the world.

Fashola state this at a workshop on the Power Sector Recovery Programme (PSRP) arguing further that Nigerians should understand the dynamics of power (electricity) before commenting.

In a statement from his spokesperson, Hakeem Bello, quoted Fashola as noting that South Africa, whose economy largely depends on mining, consumes a lot of power adding that with the federal government now paying attention to real growth through economic diversification as seen in the development of mining and others, the nation’s power sector is being prepared to support such growth.

“We have left mining. We are now in oil and gas. Dr Fayemi in the ministry of mines and steel is just trying to reset us back. We are trying to support their mining power demands whenever they are ready,” Fashola said adding that in comparing Nigeria with a country like South Africa, one must take into cognizance the former is largely a trading economy while the latter is already producing nuclear energy, aircraft and military hardware, using more power.

“When people say Germany is exporting power, your country is exporting power too. To Niger, to Republic of Benin, to Togo and we are selling gas to the West African region.

“Stop putting yourself down, we are a great country. We have challenges let us go and deal with them.

“All of this South Africa has this doesn’t follow just that way. Rwanda as at December 2016 had 208MW, the whole country; barely half of what Abuja DisCo uses.

“Niger is running on 80MW, Republic of Togo 200MW less than Abuja, Ghana is about 3,000MW installed capacity and they are not producing all of that; Lagos alone is getting 1200MW, one state, half of another country. So we must understand the dynamics of electricity use.

“Again, if you read the Economic Recovery and Growth Plan and you read the Power Sector Recovery Programme, when they tell you there are no plans to solve these problems, tell them it is a lie, that they don’t know what they are saying and that there are action points here to deal with the problems," he said.