The Governor of Anambra State, Charles Soludo, has advocated the removal of gas from the exclusive legislative list.
Soludo said that states with abundant gas reserves should be able to explore the resource for power generation and other industrial purposes.
That, the governor noted, would give enough backing to the New Electricity Act 2023, which empowers governors and the private sector to generate, transmit, and distribute power within their jurisdictions.
Soludo spoke at the just concluded South-East Business Roundtable and flag-off of the Light-up Nigeria Project – South-East by the Vice President, Senator Kashim Shettima in Enugu.
The forum, which had the Minister of Power, Adebayo Adelabu, in attendance, was in collaboration with the Niger Delta Power Holding Company of Nigeria and aimed at discussing the challenges facing the power sector in the South-East.
According to Soludo, Anambra would soon pass its electricity bill, but gas would be needed to give power to the people of the state.
“Electricity is the driver for everything. And I want to commend that the National Assembly and the governors, we have done something about the solution, and which is removing electricity from the exclusive legislative list to the concurrent legislative list; so that governors in respective states can now create viable competitive electricity markets.
“In our own state, the electricity bill will soon be passed. But beyond just passing the law, we have worked hard to develop an electricity policy that would create a vibrant market for everyone to operate.
“But we need to unlock one other thing that is the exclusive list that is gas. To have the electricity come out from the exclusive list into the concurrent list without gas, with the Federal Government still having a stranglehold on gas, that is a challenge,” he said.
To the minister of power, he said: “The Honourable Minister of Power, put it in your to-do list, we should go back to the National Assembly to unbundle it and take out gas from the exclusive and put it in the concurrent legislative list.
“Anambra has an abundance of gas, but we can’t take it and provide power for our people. We need electricity; Anambra is an industrial hub, but without power, we can’t do anything. If we do everything to fix all the areas of doing business, without power, that’s not going to work.”
The PUNCH reports that the country’s power grid has been facing challenges due to the lack of enough gas to power the gas-fired power plants.
Amid the complaints of gas scarcity, Nigeria is one of the countries where gas flaring is still a major concern.
