Fact check: How true is Fashola's claim that Ghana's electricity generation capacity is 3000MW?

macfranc007 February 04, 2018 Nigeria News today & Breaking news ▷ Read Nigerian newspapers 24/7 Nurudeen Lawal

Nigeria’s electricity sector faces series of challenges. For instance, a recent data from the Transmission Company of Nigeria (TCN) showed that the national electricity grid collapsed six times within a period of eight days in January 2018.

Statistics from an arm of the TCN, the Nigeria Electricity System Operator, showed that the incidents occurred between Monday, January 1 and Monday, January 8.

However, in an earlier report by NAIJ.com,the power, housing and works minister, Babatunde Fashola, commenting on the status of electricity in Nigeria, pleaded with Nigerians to stop running down the country while arguing that despite some challenges, Nigeria could still compete favourably with other countries of the world.

Fashola, comparing Nigeria’s electricity with the other countries’, said that Ghana is only about generating 3,000MW while Nigeria has reportedly put measures in place to be generating 4500MW minimum daily.

He said: “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."

Is Ghana's electricity generation capacity 3000MW as claimed by Fashola?

NAIJ.com fact-checks this claim.

Ghana’s finance minister, Ken Ofori-Atta, while presenting his ministry’s budget, said the government will increase the installed generation capacity by about 487MW through Cenpower (340MW), Early Power Phase 1 (147MW), this year (2018) to meet the growing demand for electricity.

Ofori-Atta said the country’s installed generation capacity was increased from 4,132 MW in 2016 to 4,577MW in 2017, adding that under the Transmission System Improvement Projects, GRIDCo had been carrying out the Transmission System Reinforcement Project to improve operational reliability, security, and control, among others.

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Going by the statement credited to the finance minister, as reported by Ghana Web, Ghana’s electricity generation capacity as at 2017 is 4,577MW.

Thus, the claim that Ghana's electricity generation capacity is about 3000MW by Fashola is false.

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