DECENTRALISING THE POWER SECTOR
The case for adequate intervention is overdue
Following last week collapse of the national grid, for the 12th time this year, the Forum of Commissioners of Power and Energy called for decentralised solutions to ensure uninterrupted power supply in the country. “The recurrence of grid collapses disrupts lives and businesses, creating far-reaching economic and social consequences,” the forum’s Chairman, Eka Williams, said after their meeting which outlined several strategies aimed at tackling the persistent power crisis. “As Commissioners of Power and Energy from across Nigeria, we are united in addressing this challenge with pragmatic and state-driven solutions.”
The 36 states, according to the forum, are accelerating efforts to establish and operationalise state electricity markets to decentralise the power sector. This approach aims to enhance generation, transmission, and distribution infrastructure tailored to the unique needs of each state. “It is time to embrace a decentralised electricity framework where states have the autonomy and resources to manage their power needs effectively. Together, we can overcome the current challenges and build a more reliable and equitable power sector for Nigeria,” Williams added.
We endorse the position of the 36 states. Compared to competing nations in Africa, Nigeria is in a dismal situation. South Africa produces 44,000 Megawatts of electricity and recently celebrated seven months of uninterrupted power supply. Unfortunately, despite the billions of dollars spent since 1999 to increase the nation’s power supply, not much has been achieved in that regard. The frequent grid collapses can mostly be traced to an overload of demand in relation to a paltry power generation capacity. To salvage the power sector from total collapse, we have always canvased a more robust power generation strategy with a diversity of sources and wider international investment spread.
In a report published last year, the World Bank rated Nigeria as the poorest country in the world on power supply to citizens with 85 million people not connected to the grid, and a loss of $26 billion annually. With everybody supplying their own electricity, our country has indeed been one of the toughest places in the world to do business. Many small and medium scale businesses have been crippled due to the prohibitive cost of generating their own power. Even the big business ventures, particularly the manufacturing ones, feel the biting effect of energy poverty with consequences stretching to every part of the economy. Lack of electricity has also limited access to healthcare, education, and other opportunities for most Nigerians.
It is unfortunate that a decade after the privatisation of the power sector, majority of Nigerians have come to the inescapable conclusion that the process through which countries like India, Singapore and a host of other contemporary emerging economies successfully used to reset their electric power challenge is proving too difficult to be applied effectively on our shores. Instead of generating, transmitting, and distributing enough megawatts of electricity to homes and industries across the country, what we get almost daily are excuses from the authorities.
Before now, the common excuse for grid collapse was always that the transmission lines could not wheel the power so generated by the generating companies (GENCOS). At some point, frequent grid collapses were attributed to vandalism of some transmission infrastructure. Now, it has become a regular feature in the sector. Despite recent astronomical hikes in electricity tariff, authorities in the power sector seem incapable of putting an end to the frequent collapses of the national grid. Within a period of 48 hours last month, the grid collapsed twice, plunging the entire country into darkness. While the Transmission Company of Nigeria (TCN) blamed the collapse on some ongoing repair works, its obvious that there are serious systemic issues across the power value chain. Addressing these challenges would require more than a cosmetic approach.
