…Says 141 collapses in 11 years worrisome

The national leader of the Labour Party (LP), Mr Peter Obi has described as worrisome, the incessant collapse of the national grid, which he noted occurred a record of 141 times within eleven years.

Obi in an article titled “The Collapsing Electricity Sector,” called for urgent pragmatic solutions to the problem.

“The Nigeria electricity supply industry faces real and present danger of collapse despite the efforts made in more than two decades to initiate a reform,” he said.

The Labour Party presidential candidate in the 2023 general election noted that Nigeria has only 13,000mw of electricity whereas the national demand is about 200,000mw.

According to him, out of the 13,000mw, only about 3,500mw are available for homes and businesses, which he said, puts Nigeria at the lowest per capita wattage in the World.

“It is sad today that we suffer periodic and routinised system collapses that are attributed to such avoidable situations as fire outbreaks at critical transmission lines across our major cities.

“It is absolutely distressing and a story of a low level of managerial capability that the entire nation can be plunged into total darkness for a reasonable period because networks go out because of a lack of diligent attention,” he regretted.

Obi noted that countries like Egypt and South Africa with populations of 112 million and 59.6 million people supply 60,000mw and 58,000mw of electricity respectively to their citizens.

“This difference in energy wattage has massive implications for human development and economic growth,” he stated, pointing out that Nigeria’s installed capacity could only deliver less than 4,000mw.

The former Anambra State governor blamed the nation’s energy problem on generation, transmission and distribution, adding that “The major challenges of the generation sector are the lack of a regular supply of gas arising from the failure of the government in the last eight years to provide adequate gas infrastructure facilities, weak commerciality of gas to power and failure to control the restiveness of angry youths leading to vandalism.”

He described it as shameful that for more than eight years Nigeria could not resolve the infrastructural bottlenecks that constrain the supply of gas to power plants despite billions from the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) for legacy gas debts.

Obi called on the Federal Government to constitute a technical task force of professionals without political consideration, to present a diagnosis of the crisis of the sector.

The task force, he stated, could provide a solution to the incessant fire outbreaks that often lead to perennial system collapse.

It could also improve coordination and coherence between the Transmission Company of Nigeria (TCN) and Distribution Companies (DisCos).

“If we had a good project manager, we would have massively increased generation, transmission and distribution capacity and enhanced policy coherence that would have crowded private sector investment in the degree to sustained rapid growth of the grid,” the former governor said.

He expressed the belief that when this is done, “There will be no load rejection, and breath down on all operators to deliver on their technical responsibilities.

“This will rapidly improve power availability in the short term while the government develop clarity to articulate an integrated national electricity policy and a practical implementation roadmap that harmonises national and sub-national electricity reform efforts to ensure rapid and expansive delivery of reliable, adequate, and affordable electricity.

“We are too endowed to be a nation of generators and to be trapped in darkness. We cannot grow our economy in darkness.”

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