The Federal Government is committed to ensuring steady power supply in the country in spite of the challenges of gas supply, Minister of Power, Lanre Babaloa has said.

The Minister who spoke through the Head of Press and Public Relations of the Ministry, Mrs. Olubunmi Badejo said efforts to provide for adequate, commercial, industrial and domestic needs in the short term were being intensified, especially towards increasing gas supply to the power stations.

"To address the problem in the medium term, diversification of electricity gerneration is being explored to include using mixed sources of energy such as coal, wind, solar, biomass as well as small hydro plants [SHPs]", the Minister said.

Babalola said efforts being made at improving the commercial framework include the development of Power Purchase Agreement [PPA], guaranteeing investments as well as improving on efficiency of delivering electricity services.

He said: "For Nigeria to achieve the Vision 20:2020 of being among the top 20 economies of the world by 2020 there is the dire need for adequate and sustainable electricity supply to grow the economy."

He explained that in order to achieve the Vision 20:2020 objectives, the Power sector needed to grow at an annual rate of 15 percent in order to generate, transmit and distribute additional 1500MW and 2000MW annually in the long run.

"The financial implication of our national aspiration is between $3billion and $5billion per annum", he said pointing out that based on the pattern of the federal government funding of the power sector, it was clear that government alone cannot meet the funding requirements.