The presidential candidate of the Labour Party (LP) in last year’s general elections, Peter Obi, has expressed concern and sought urgent and lasting solutions to the perennial deplorable electricity supply in the country, recording 141 cases of national grid collapse in 11 years.
He stated this on Wednesday in a series of posts on his X handle, saying that Nigeria could not grow its economy in darkness, especially that the nation only produced 13,000MW while the demand was about 200,000MW.
He said that even with the 13,000MW, only about 3,500MW was available for homes and businesses, hence that the situation put Nigeria as the lowest per capita wattage in the World.
“We are too endowed to be a nation of generators and to be trapped in darkness. We cannot grow our economy in darkness.
“The Nigeria electricity supply industry faces a real and present danger of collapse despite the efforts made in more than two decades to initiate a reform of the NESI.”
He further said that Nigerians could contrast the available supply of electricity with competitor countries in Africa like Egypt and South Africa with respective populations of approximately 112m and 59.6m people supplying about 60,000MW and 58,000MW respectively.
He noted that the difference in energy wattage had massive implications for human development and economic growth.
He advised that, “I suggest that the federal government immediately constitutes a technical task force of real professionals without political consideration to present a diagnosis of the crisis of the sector and get to work to correct such simple slippage like incessant fire outbreaks that lead to perennial system collapse, drastically improve coordination and coherence between TCN and DisCos so that there will be no load rejection, and breath down on all operators to deliver on their technical responsibilities.”
