President Goodluck Jonathan has approved the sum of $4 billion to boost electricity transmission in the country.

The Minister of Power and Steel, Professor Chinedu Nebo disclosed this on Friday at the official commissioning of 1 X 150MVA, 330/132kv Transformer at Ayede 330/132kv Substation, Ibadan, Oyo State capital.

He said that the president had also approved a master plan for a national grid which would provide power to all rural areas in the country.

According to him, this will have a national transformation impact on the country's electricity supply. "Not only will the national grid be a lot more reliable, but will be a lot more effective in places where there is no power before in Nigeria. It will also have a huge impact on the entire Nigeria populace," he said.

 The power minister also disclosed that Nigeria has a metering gap of three million, adding that it is a huge market for meters manufacturers to tap into.

Commenting on the fate of the staffs of the defunct Power Holding Company of Nigeria (PHCN), he said: "Over 40,000 of the 47,000 PHCN workers has been paid off, we are also working hard to ensure that the remaining 7,000 workers whose bio-metric capturing was not perfect, some of them opening multiple banks accounts with different names and this has been giving the pension funds problem, because the computer does not accept multiple
data."

On the challenges confronting the power sector, Nebo said vandalism of the gas pipelines and electricity equipment had been a major setback to achieve stable power supply.

"We have deployed the national security adviser to tackle this issue, and he has brought in the Army, Civil Defence Corps and other security operatives to protect all the power facilities. We have also digitally devised a way of monitoring the length and breadth of these facilities to ensure that whenever will have a breach we shall detect easily." he said

Nebo urged Nigerians to be patient with the new power investors, stressing that it will take some couple of months before Nigerians can be confident of stable power supply.