The President Bola Tinubu-led Federal Government has announced that it is working to eliminate grid collapse from the nation’s power sector in the long term.

The Minister of Power, Adebayo Adelabu, who disclosed this during a budget defence session before the Senate Committee on Power in Abuja, however said in the short term, efforts of the ministry are geared towards reducing the frequency of collapses and a 24 hours restoration of power in the event of any such occurrence.

Adelabu said: “We are proud to say that we almost met all our targets for 2024 with the meagre budget that was approved for 2024 and our hope that 2025 will be a better year for us and we will be able to address all the existing issues in the sector, which are the gas infrastructure issue, which still exists in terms of the supply of gas, in terms of volumes and in terms pipelines that are also vandalised, that actually supply poor quality of gas to the power generation companies, in terms of the old dilapidated transmission infrastructures that we inherited.

“Like I mentioned about partial or full collapses, as it is today, we cannot write it off that it will not happen. What we do is to ensure that we manage it and ensure that we reduce the frequency of collapses and when it happens, we have a very short turnaround time for us to bring it up. The target is 2024 hours and the grid must be up again.

“As it is, we are trying to manage but in 2025, the focus of the Presidential Power Initiative and other activities of the Transmission Company of Nigeria is to ensure that the grid does not collapse as frequent as it did in 2024 and the issue of vandalism which was also a major reason for the grid disturbances.

“We are collaborating and cooperating with the security agencies to ensure that we actually attack these issues and we nip it in the board to ensure that we don’t experience such in 2025.”

He also disclosed that power generation improved by 30per cent in 2024, adding that the Ministry has set a target of acquiring 10million prepaid electricity metres in the next five years beginning from 2025 to bridge the shortfall of the essential equipment in the country.

“The target is to procure a minimum of two million meters on annual basis for the next five years, that’s about 10 million meters, which we believe will completely eliminate the existing metre gap and billing will become transparent, it will become objective, and it will become fair and just to our people because we want to eliminate any form of fraud in terms of electricity billing and that will also improve people’s confidence in the sector.”

He lamented that the Ministry was confronted with funding issues in 2024 while calling on the Senate to intervene through its power of appropriation.

He said: “We all know that the power sector is a very expensive and fund guzzling sector across the world. Outside food security, energy security has been an issue all over the world, not just in Nigeria. Go to Europe, go to Asia, go to the Middle East, South America, North America, it is food security, and energy security and we all know what are the causes of these.

“So, each country is actually struggling to ensure that they reduce as much as possible the negative impact of this energy security. So, we need to pump so much funds into it. We may look at the budget in terms of billions of naira, but by the time we translate this into foreign currency as 90% of items used in the power sector, they are imported. You will find out that our budget for 2024, will barely be sufficient to establish two substations.

“Yes, two substations and the one for this year too, in as much as it is much higher than what we had in 2024, in fact it is the highest so far in the history of the Federal Ministry of Power and that shows the seriousness of Mr. President and his team to ensure that the Renewed Hope Agenda of Mr. President touches on delivering stable electricity, functional electricity, reliable and affordable electricity to Nigerians.

“So we are still owing the generating companies. The last time I was here, I said it was about N1.3trillion. We paid about N180 or N200 billion a few months back. Since then, we have not paid and this is really affecting the activities of the generating companies. They have to pay their gas suppliers too. They have to service their machines, and they have to pay their staff. So we must be very reasonable and considerate in ensuring that funds are provided to pay the debts we are owing the GenCos.”

Adelabu further disclosed that power generation in the country improved by 30 per cent in 2024 due to concerted efforts by the ministry and other critical stakeholders.

He said: “Our focus during the 2024 budget year was more on energy access expansion. As we know, quite a huge number of Nigerians still lack access to electricity.

“As at the last count when we were taking this job up, we had about 41per cent of Nigerians who lacked access to electricity, about 92 million people estimated towards the end of 2023, that is about 59per cent energy access in Nigeria.

“This was more in the urban and semi-urban centres, while the preponderance of rural areas lacked energy access. But I’m happy to inform you that during 2024, with the programmes of the ministry and agencies, we were able to establish that the energy access has moved by five per cent from 59per cent at end of 2023 to 64per cent by the end of 2024 and this is a result of the combination of grid access expansion and increase in the volume and activities in the renewable energy space, which cover mainly the solar assets, the small hydro and wind energy source.

“I want to also bring to the knowledge of this committee that power generation increased by about 30per cent during 2024 fiscal year. We met an average of 4,100Mwof power generation in 2023 and I can tell you authoritatively that by the end of 2024, we had a peak generation of 5,528 Mw of power from 4,100 that we made on-ground.

“The reason for this is not far-fetched. We know that we added a new hydroelectric power dam at Zungeru, of 700 Mw and also, there was a tremendous increase in the generation by other existing power generating companies, mainly hydro and thermal plants – Jebba recorded improvements, Kainji recorded improvements, Shiroro, Dadin Kowa, Kashimbilla – also recorded improvement from 10 Mw to about 30 megawatts. Then we have Gurara, which is also being worked upon.

“With regards to thermal plants, almost all the thermal plants recorded improvements, especially the ones owned by the government, which is the plants under the Niger Delta Power Holding Company (NDPHC), from Olorosogo, Omotoso, Ihovbor, Sapelé, Geregu, Calabar, Egbema, etc.

“So we were able to increase generation to 5,528Mw at the peak. Even though our target was 6,000 megawatts, due to some challenges that we experienced towards the end of the year in terms of grid disturbances, we missed this target by a minimal amount.”

He noted that apart from energy access, the ministry had planned to stabilise the grid and other transmission infrastructure in 2024.

“I am happy to also inform you that out of the eight collapses of the national grid that we experienced during 2024, five were full collapses, while three were actually partial collapses.

“Out of the five full collapses that we experienced, three out of them were actually due to generation problems when we had issues with sudden reduction in generation compared to the power being taken up by the users which affected the frequency imbalance on the grid.

“The reason for this was not far-fetched. The gas infrastructure issue is there and then we had the Schneider automation issue that is not existent. So out of the five, three were from generation, while two were actually from vandalization (vandalism) problems.

“I do not want to over-emphasize this, because we are aware of what happened during 2024. It was a major issue for the sector and the major lines were vandalized. The last one was actually the Kaduna-Mando-Shiroro line which was one of the two major lines that took power to the North. The second one, which is the Ugwachu-Makurdi-Bauchi line, was also vandalized. That was when we experienced about a week of blackout to the north and we immediately rectified the Ugwachu-Makurdi-Bauchi line as the only source of power to the North.

“As I’m talking to you, we have not rectified the major line which is the Shiroro-Mando-Katuna line, which is why our grid is so fragile, because it’s only one line that is still supplying power to the North, and it’s being burdened unnecessarily, and we know the implication of this on the infrastructural technicalities.

So, it is still the insecurity that has not made us fix the Shiroro-Kaduna-Mando line, which has been handed over to the security agencies. Till today they have not even fixed it. So as against the 12 times collapse that is in the public space it is just about eight collapses, five full collapses and three partial collapses. Out of the five, three were caused by generation, while two were vandalization.”

He told the committee that out of the N2,086,790,002,565 allocated to the Ministry and agencies under it in the 2025 budget proposals, N6,273,058,012 is for Personnel, N4,211,403,159 is for Overhead and N2,076,305,541,394 is for Capital Expenditure.

He further disclosed that the Ministry has no plan to increase electricity tariff this year but to strengthen generation, improve power infrastructure and migrate more customers to Band A.

The Chairman, Senate Committee on Power, Senator Enyinnaya Abaribe, in his opening remarks, asked the minister to speak to how the challenges bedeviling the power sector would be overcome.

Abaribe (APGA – Abia South) said: “As you are aware, the Nigerian Electricity Supply Industry (NESI), is currently bedeviled by endemic problems which have greatly undermined the efficient power supply in the country and is exemplified by the frequent national grid collapse in the country, among others.

“These challenges include, one, the issue of obsolete grid infrastructure, especially around the transmission and distribution segments of the national grid, which is considered a major culprit in the frequent collapse that we experience.

“Two, tariff shortfalls and Federal Government’s subsidy burden, which has impacted on liquidity in the NESI; and three, the metering challenge.

“Four, the debts that are owed service providers by ministries, departments and agencies vis-à-vis the liquidity challenge confronting operations of the NESI.

“Accordingly, as a departure from the usual yearly ritual, this year’s budget defence seeks to achieve the following specific operative objectives and also to answer the following questions, namely how the 2024 budget performed in the outlined issues above and what is being proposed to permanently address the issues.

“It’s therefore our expectation that the Honourable Minister will spearhead the budget defence along these lines and then when we come to the different agencies will get further insights into these issues. I will state that we expect full disclosures and total commitment to improving the supply of electricity to Nigeria.”

Credit: thenaiononlineng.net

Fed Govt working to eliminate grid collapse, says Adelabu

Comments (0)