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Another attack was yesterday launched on Utorogu gas plant that supplies Egbin power station, Nigeria’s major plant in Ikorodu, Lagos State, reducing the country’s generating capacity to 1900mega watts from 2,400.
This came just as the nation had started recording improvement in the supply of electricity. With this development the Egbin power plant is now generating 100mw as against the about 600mw it has been generating in the past few weeks. 
The management of the Power Holding Company of Nigeria (PHCN) which disclosed this did not specify the nature of the attack, only saying that it was undertaken by “vandals”. It said a notice from the Nigerian Gas Company (NGC) yesterday adviced it of the situation prompted a reduction of output from the Egbin Power Station. 
“According to NGC, this was caused by vandalisation of the Utorogu pipeline which supplies gas to the Egbin Power Station,” PHCN said. 
The disruption means a further reduction in generation capacity from the station of about 500 megawatts. 
Due to gas supply limitation, Sapele  Power Station has been shut down since November 2008, while Geregu, Omotosho and Olosunsogo power stations are similarly affected. 
The PHCN management said in this circumstance, it is appealing to its esteemed customers, the media and other stakeholders for understanding and continued support “as the NGC has assured us of immediate repairs.” 
There was a relative improvement in the generation capacity of the power plants, a situation which has subsequently brought about some improvement in power supply to major cities across the country in the last two weeks before the latest distruption. BusinessDay investigation revealed that most of the rural areas have not been having power supply because they are considered not commercially viable for the organisation in terms of revenue. Because of this, several communities, especially semi urban areas and villages have had prolonged power outages, some for upwards of about one month without power supply. 
According to a PHCN source, the improvement achieved was attributed to the hydro power plant which are now contributing 772 mega watts to the national grid in the last few days . As at yesterday the three hydro power plants contributed 772mw while Egbin contributes 100mw , Afam, operated by Shell 445mw , Okpai 281mw ,while Geregu,Omotosho, olorunsogo, Sapele and Afam 1-5 operated by PHCN are down because of lack of gas supply. 
However, sustaining the current level of generation is the greatest challenge the organisation has now. According to inquiry by BusinessDay in Abuja some areas within the capital city recorded an unprecedented three days uninterrupted power supply with others saying outages at a time lasted not more than two hours.
PHCN had attributed this to increased water levels and grid generation. Debo Adegoke, PHCN’s Abuja regional principal manager, public affairs, revealed that allocation as at weekend was 140 mw, as against the previous allocations to the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) which was as low as 40mw.