Group Managing Director of Nigeria National Petroleum Cooperation (NNPC), Mr Mele Kyari, said wednesday that the federal government had paid over N200 billion to the power sector towards improving electricity supply.

Kyari disclosed this while speaking with journalists in Abuja shortly after a closed door meeting between the NNPC; Minister of Power, Mr Sale Mamman, and Managing Director of Transmission Company of Nigeria (TCN) Mr Usman Mohammed.

“Actually the federal government has made payment of over N200 billion for power in the last 23 days and this will go a long way to ensure that issues around power supply are addressed.

“We will work as a team to ensure that all issues are settled,” he said.

NAN reported that Kyari said that team was in the Ministry of Power to inform the minister that in the last one or two months and particularly during the COVID-19 period NNPC had increased gas supply to the power sector.

According to him, there will be a significant improvement in power generation in all federal government and associated power facilities.

He said: “This also means that Nigerians will get better access to power during this lockdown period and going forward.

“There are issues around power supply process and we have discussed most of them and we are moving as a team to make sure that we resolve issues around payment and evacuation.

“We are very confident that this will get the desired result. We will visit some power plants tomorrow to make sure that we sort out any issue to ensure that Nigerians have access to better power.”

He said that the minister was very clear on what was to be done to improve the power supply.

We will make sure this becomes transparent and obvious to all Nigerians.”

TCN Managing Director, Mohammed, said the meeting was to ensure that there was a constant supply of power as directed by President Muhammadu Buhari.

Mohammed said the president had directed that there should be constant power supply to the people during the COVID-19 lockdown.

“This is why this meeting was convened by minister of power to discuss the supply of gas to power plants.

This is very important before now we have been discussing with NNPC, of course there is gas availability in the market but there are several power plants that don’t have gas and that is a big problem for us.

“With this meeting where the minister prevailed that NNPC should assist in supplying gas to the power plants we believe that will have steady and sustainable power supply going forward especially during the COVID-19 lockdown,” he said.

Thisday