Adelabu Claims Nigerians No Longer Need Petrol for Electricity on Improved Nationwide Power Supply

•Says Nigeria targeting N2trn industry revenue in 2024 

•TCN reveals recovery almost complete as power grid collapses twice in 24 hours

Emmanuel Addeh in Abuja and Peter Uzoho, Esther Oluku in Lagos

The Minister of Power, Adebayo Adelabu yesterday claimed that a large number of Nigerians had stopped complaining about the high petrol prices because they no longer need it  to run their generators before enjoying electricity.

The minister stated this yesterday in Lagos, during his keynote address at the ongoing 2024 edition of the Nigeria Energy Exhibition and Conference, with the theme, “Breaking Barriers in the New Energy Era: Clean, Reliable and Sustainable”.

The federal government had last week said the petroleum downstream sector had been deregulated, raising the cost per litre of the fuel to over N1,000 per litre.

The astronomical rise in the price of petrol led to the sharp increase in the cost of transportation, food items and other essential household commodities in Nigeria.

But speaking at the conference, Adelabu said the people were not making a loud noise abound the increase as they didn’t have to buy petrol at N1,000 to power their generators and have electricity.

He said the federal government intended to replace all the generators in the country in line with the Lagos State Policy of Replacement of 1 Million Generators in One Year.

Adelabu stated: “People don’t need to buy petrol again as much as they used to do for them to have power. That’s why the noise is even at this level. If they had to be going to the filling stations to buy N1000 per litre of petrol to generate electricity, we would have even had louder noise from the public.

“So, what we intend to do is to make sure that all the generators are replaced in line with Lagos State Policy of Replacement of 1 Million Generators in One Year. I saw that. We must replace all the generators.”

In the same breathe, the minister lamented Nigeria’s abysmal performance in the area of power generation, stating that the country added only 2000 megawatts of power to the national grid in the last 40 years dating back to 1984.

“But we are over 200 million people, we are still celebrating achieving 5000MW milestone. Why this seems to be an achievement is because it took us almost 40 years to generate additional 2000MW from the 2000MW milestone we achieved in 1984. When we came to the office, we met 4000MW.

“Now, we have taken it to average of 5000MW, with a peak of 5,527MW on the third of September. But we are not deterred. If the last best time was 50 years ago, I believe the next best time is today, and this must wake us up. So, it’s an issue I don’t like to remember”, he said.

Also, Adelabu noted that with the payment of appropriate cost reflective electricity tariff in Nigeria, the sector could easily generate N5 trillion in revenue.

From the N1 trillion revenue recorded in 2023, the minister assured that the Nigerian Electric Supply Industry (NESI) could achieve an upside of N2 trillion income by the end of 2024.

He explained, “In electricity tariff, we can easily make N5 trillion in this sector, and we have seen the jump now. From N1 trillion in 2023, I can assure you we will achieve nothing less than N2 trillion for the industry in 2024. And this can only continue to grow.

“If this sector can boast of between N3 trillion and N5 trillion on a yearly basis as industry revenue, we will maintain infrastructure, we will replace dilapidated transformers, broken lines, damages towers. There will be  a lot of money to be committed to investment in the sector because infrastructure is about investment.”

He said the government had also taken decisive steps to resolve legacy debts to gas suppliers and had secured presidential approval to settle the obligations.

According to him, one of the major hindrances or factors militating against the power sector is the huge debt overhang.

He reiterated that about N1.3 trillion was being owed power generating companies (Gencos) and  $1.3 billion owed gas suppliers.

He said the president approved the gradual defrayment of these debts, adding that the intervention had also helped in ramping up generation from an average of 4000MW to a peak of 5,527MW.

This intervention, he explained, had helped to prevent disruptions in gas supply, ensuring stable electricity generation and providing the much needed reliability to the grid.

Adelabu further informed that the cornerstone of the government and his ministry’s efforts had been ensuring financial sustainability of the sector.

In line with that, he said they had successfully mobilised over $1 billion to de-risk projects and attract additional investments into the sector.

He mentioned one of such as the launch of the Renewable Investment Platform Limitless Energy (RIPLE) programme, with $500 million from the Nigerian Sovereign Investment Authority (NSIA).

He added, “We have finalised the World Bank’s $750 million Distributed Access Through Renewable Energy Scheme (DARES) scheduled to commence  next month which will deliver electricity to over 2.5 million people through solar home systems and standalone minigrid and grid-connected minigrid in underserved areas.

“We cannot achieve energy expansion with government spending alone. The entire budget for this year was less than N30 trillion. How much is N30 trillion? And we know that for us to achieve the El Dorado for the power sector, there must be a spending of about $10 billion on a yearly basis for the next 10 years. It must come through private sector investment.”

Similarly, the minister said the federal government was targeting the deployment of 1.3 million meters by the end of the second quarter of 2025 using the Nigeria Distribution Sector Recovery Program (DISREP).

He said: “We have expanded Nigeria’s ongoing generation capacity. The commissioning of the 700 megawatts Zungeru Hydroelectric power plant is a major milestone. This has resulted in an average supply of over 5,000 megawatts in the sector to a peak capacity this year of 5,527 megawatts which is close to our central target of achieving 6,000 megawatts generation.

“The DISREP programme aims to install 3.2 million meters out of which 1.3 million meters have been procured with the first set of meters to be delivered by December 2024, while the balance will be delivered by the second quarter next year.”

Adelabu said that the initiative will further reduce estimated billing, enhance transparency and improve liquidity within the energy sector.

The latest metering figures, released by the Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission (NERC), shows that while efforts to reduce the metering gap are ongoing, millions of electricity consumers remain without meters.

Adelabu also said that the federal government was prioritising local content development by promoting domestic production of energy components, creating jobs, and reducing reliance on imports.

“For emphasis, we have a mandate in place on the DISREP programme that ensures at least 250,000 meters are procured from local manufacturers the procurement process for this batch is ongoing,” he added.

Meanwhile, Nigeria’s beleaguered power sector yesterday took another major hit, less than 24 hours after it experienced a nationwide blackout, with another grid collapse  disrupting businesses and social activities nationwide. Tuesday’s incident which happened at about 9:17 am would be about  the seventh time that the country would be experiencing either a grid collapse or partial disturbance this year.

But the Transmission Company of Nigeria (TCN) in a statement in Abuja signed by its General Manager, Public Affairs, Ndidi Mbah, stated that the company had begun to restore power in parts of the country and had ‘almost’ completed the process.

“TCN hereby states that the national grid experienced a partial disturbance, on Monday, 14 October, 2024 at about 6:48 pm and notes that efforts to fully recover the grid is still ongoing.

“Although the recovery of the grid commenced immediately, with Azura power station providing the ‘blackstart’, grid recovery reached advanced stages at about 10.24am, today (Tuesday) when it encountered a challenge that caused a slight setback in the recovery process,” the statement added.

The ‘slight’ setback notwithstanding, TCN said it continued with the grid recovery process, which had reached an advanced stage, ensuring bulk power availability to about 90 per cent of its substations nationwide.

“ Supply has  been restored to the Abuja axis and other major distribution load centres nationwide,” it added.

According to the TCN, the partial disturbance did not affect the Ibom Gas generating station which was islanded from the grid, and continued to supply areas in the South Southern part of the country such as Eket, Ekim, Uyo, and Itu 132kV transmission Substations during the period.

It explained that an investigation into the cause of the incident will be carried out as soon as the grid is fully restored.

But the electricity Distribution Companies (Discos) announced the shutdown in separate statements on Tuesday, stressing that the grid collapse affected supply within their network.

Earlier, Ikeja Electric confirmed that the national grid collapsed at about 9:17am, affecting power supply within its franchise.

“Please be informed that we experienced another system outage today 15/10/24 at 09:17hrs affecting supply within our network,” the firm said, explaining that it was collaborating with critical stakeholders to restore power supply to its customers.

Also, Eko DisCo assured its customers of collaborating with its partners to fix the issue, pledging to update its customers when power is restored.

“Kindly be informed there was a system collapse at 09:17hrs which has resulted in a loss of power supply across our network. We are currently working with our partners as we hope for speedy restoration of the grid. We will keep you updated as soon as power supply is restored,” the power distributor said.

Despite years of investment in the country’s power sector, the national electricity grid remains very fragile, with little or no ‘shock absorbers’ during fluctuations.

However, the federal government recently carried out a demonstration of the Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) system being built in partnership with the World Bank to help stabilise the national electricity grid.

“By implementing this advanced technology, we are taking a bold step towards addressing some of the issues holding the sector down. The SCADA system will enable us to monitor the entire electricity network from a centralised location, thereby ensuring that we can respond promptly to outages, manage loads efficiently and optimise the overall performance of our power systems.

“With features such as automated data collection, fault detection and remote-controlled operations, we are laying the groundwork for a more resilient and responsive power sector,” Acting Permanent Secretary, Emmanuel Nosike, said recently.