October 20, (THEWILL) – The Minister of Power, Adebayo Adelabu, last Wednesday said that national grid collapses are almost inevitable in Nigeria, given the deplorable state of the country’s power infrastructure.
Speaking in Lagos on Wednesday, at the unveiling of Hexing Livoltek, an electricity meter manufacturing company in Lekki, Adelabu said having multiple power grids in each region and state rather than a single national grid would ensure stability to avoid incessant collapse.
He noted that the decentralisation of the power sector would help the plan to build grids in each region, saying this was made possible by the Electricity Act signed by President Bola Tinubu in 2023.
Then he ended with what amounts to an anti-climax. “That is why we need a lot of investments in this infrastructure to bring them up to speed, to bring them up to the state that can give us a grid that will not collapse again.”
Sad to note that last Tuesday’s collapse is the seventh since January 2024 alone. And that the government has spent N7 trillion in subsidies to electricity generating companies, GENCOs and electricity distribution companies, GENCOs, since their privatization in 2013. This is because the government still retains a 40 per cent stake in the companies. Year in, year out, the national wattage hovers between 5,000 and 7,000 megawatts despite the funds and designs expended.
It was in the bid to get out of this recurring problem that the government enacted the Electricity Act in 2023. Apparently, nothing has changed since then.
The Electricity Act decentralised power in 2023 and yet nothing has practically changed for the better in the power sector.
Why? Because the culture and mind set in the public agencies dealing with the power sector is still too marred in bureaucratic red tape to guarantee efficiency and sustainability in the management of the power infrastructure in the country.
That was the point in the frustration experienced by billionaire businessman, Adedeji Adeleke, father of popular musician, Davido, when he suffered pains to secure an official environmental permit for his power plant worth over $2 billion.
According to Adeleke, an unnamed government official told him that the project would never “see the light of day”. He had to go spiritual to have this awkward circumstance altered in his favour.
Meanwhile, the Afreximbank of Chinese which had advanced him credit for the 1,250 megawatt power plant, were at their wits end with bankruptcy staring them in the face as the design and other preliminary work had been done except for the environmental permit.
Apart from this kind of bureaucratic roadblock that breeds inefficiency, the other challenge is the old boy network that encourages undue favouritism and incompetence.
Talking about this recently, ex-Minister of Economic Planning, Dr Shamsudeen Usman, disclosed that most of the 11 DisCos that were privatised in 2013 were hijacked by extremely greedy people in the Federal Government and their agents. These are the people whose inertia has kept the national wattage consistently at between the 4,000 and 5000 scandalous wattage.
They are the people that the Minister lamented about recently when he revealed how a private company held on to N32 billion paid into its account for the supply of three million prepaid meters in 2003. This blackmail, manipulation and cunning has been the bane of the power sector over the years.
A desperate situation needs a desperate answer. It is high time the government wields the big stick and makes the GENCOs and DISCOs to sit up. Except for three out of the 11 organisations, which have managed to show functional ability, the other eight that are failing in their duty should be resold to willing and capable entrepreneurs.
If former Minister of Power, Barth Nnaji could do it with his independent Geometric Power Plant in Aba, Abia State and Adeleke has fought against saboteurs in government, then, there must be other determined Nigerians who are willing to seize the opportunity and turn the sad page of power failure and grip collapse in Nigeria.
The Federal Government must ensure that the clauses in the Electricity Act that give room for independent investors, are implemented to the letter. Enough of these lamentations that serve to remind us of the wasted funds and lack of power for industrial production and creative enterprises.
