President Abdoulaye Wade said by next February Senegal would have gone beyond its present predicament of constant electricity cuts and even sell excess of electricity to its neighbor.
"From February, we will have a surplus of 30 megawatts," Wade said while on a visit to the United States.
Although there doesn’t appear to be any exact explanation to Senegal’s present electricity problems, President Wade has since been of the opinion that sabotage of the machines in the power plant was responsible. To this effect, the Senegalese leader also vowed to track down those behind this sabotage.
Responding to a questioned by an accompanying reporter from of the privately owned Walf TV, Wade stressed that "… what is certain is that from the month of February at the latest, we will have an excess of energy of nearly 30 megawatts. We can even sell to neighboring countries.”
But, he warned, “I do not want people to think I'm looking for scapegoats. Therefore, I will not dwell on it.”
Wade revealed that the government had already established monitoring systems on all the units producing energy. He said it was amazing that with the huge amount of money being spent the country was still in this situation.
“It's quite curious,” he wondered.
When asked whether he wasn’t seeking to evade his duty to face the energy crisis, Wade replied: "Not at all."
For him, Senegalese know well about the investments that the government had made in the energy sector. "When I can not do something, I say I can not do it. Nobody can force me to commit myself to do what I can not do,” he said.
And he added: “Senegal has no oil. Consequently, Senegal suffers from increases in the price per barrel of oil. And when the price increases, we are forced to take less oil. It is necessary that people understand that.” But he added that in recent times the government had spent a lot of money on fuel, so he wouldn’t understand why the situation was like this.