Electricity generation under President Muhammad Buhari’s administration moved slightly up from the daily average generation of 3,892 MWh/h recorded in 2022. This was 9.42 percent more than the daily average generation of 3,557 MWh/h recorded in 2015 before his ascension to power. The power sector in Nigeria is fast acquiring the status of being jinxed. There has been a long search for a solution. There have been probes upon probes of the sector but all have found a lasting solution. A case of motion without movement.

Nigeria has struggled with poor power supply for decades, a challenge that is estimated to cost businesses about $29 billion yearly, according to the World Bank.
The country has the lowest access to electricity globally, with about 92 million persons out of the country’s 200 million population lacking access to power, according to the Energy Progress Report 2022 released by Tracking SDG 7.

Tinubu’s Campaign Promises

It was, therefore, inevitable that all the major presidential candidates in the 2023 general election proposed to solve the power problem as its bad state had attained an embarrassing status to all Nigerians. Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu, as he then was, the presidential candidate of the All Progressives Congress (APC), promised that if he became president, he would work towards ensuring uninterrupted power supply within four years in office.

Specifically, President Tinubu promised among other manifestoes to “generate, transmit and distribute sufficient, affordable electricity to give our people the requisite power to enlighten their lives, their homes, and their very dreams” He also promised to modernise and expand public infrastructure so that the rest of the economy can grow at an optimal rate.

It would appear those promises are being attained in the breach nine months into the Tinubu administration. In a statement issued by Mr. Bayo Onanuga, presidential media aide, Tinubu said his administration will target an electricity distribution goal of 15,000 megawatts across the country.

“On electricity, I will embark on a renewed action-oriented focus and take immediate and urgent action on resolving existing challenges of power generation plants, gas purchasing, pricing, transmission, and distribution,” he was quoted as saying.

“My administration’s critical goal is to have 15,000 megawatts distributable to all categories of consumers nationwide to ensure 24/7 sustainable supply within the next four years”.

On 29 May,2023 when President Tinubu assumed office, power generation was hovering around 4,600 MegaWatts (MW). As of Sunday, it now stands at a meager average of 3,000 MW. Nigeria has lost the power to generate more electricity. And, the effects are loud in every sector of the economy and our daily lives.

Tinubu in the saddle

Three months in the saddle, President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, on 4 August, 2023 reiterated his campaign promise of ensuring uninterrupted power supply across the country. In a statement issued by his Special Adviser to the President, Media & Publicity, Chief Ajuri Ngelale the president expressed readiness to tackle all obstacles militating against stable electricity supply in Nigeria.

According to Chief Ngelale, President Tinubu who spoke at the groundbreaking ceremony of the new 350MW Gwagwalada Independent Thermal Power Plant (Phase 1) in the Federal Capital Territory, FCT Abuja said his administration would bring solutions to the multifarious challenges facing the electric power sector value chain.

Tinubu affirmed that improved energy generation and distribution is an imperative for development and national growth.

He urged the NNPC and its partners to deliver the landmark project within the promised three-year completion timeline, insisting that, “three years must be three years”.

Adebayo Adelabu A Troubled Minister of Power

The appointment of Chief Adelabu Adebayo, an accountant and graduate of the prestigious Harvard Business School to manage the sector was perceived to be the right choice, but seven months in the saddle, Mr. Adelabu is yet to unveil a single policy document. Most of his pronouncements are either through Press statements by aides or his X handle mostly relating to the sale of gas in Nigeria, licence revocation, and unbundling of the Transmission Company of Nigeria (TCN) among others.

Unfortunately, his tenure has been dogged by poor performance of the power sector. Unimpressed by his perfomance many Nigerians have clamoured for his removal just as the President has been urged to rejig his cabinet. He has been on the trail of the distribution companies asking them to resign or lose their licenses. But the threats are far from being enough to reset the sector. There are several agreements to review and activate to get the power sector back to its feet.

On 1 December 2023, President Tinubu and the German Chancellor, Olaf Scholz, signed the Presidential Power Initiative agreement designed to inject 12,000MW of electricity into the national grid. This happened on the sidelines of the United Nations Climate Change Summit, COP28, in Dubai, the United Arab Emirates. The agreement, consummated on the sidelines of the COP28 climate summit, was signed by Mr. Kenny Anuwe, the Managing Director and CEO of FGN Power Company, and Ms. Nadja Haakansson, Siemens Energy’s Senior Vice President and Managing Director for Africa.

President Tinubu, since assuming office, has consistently advocated the accelerated realization and expansion of the PPI. To achieve this, the project has been a major focal point in three rounds of bilateral discussions at several meetings between the President and the German Chancellor, in New Delhi, Abuja, and Berlin.

The agreement signed will see to the end-to-end modernization and expansion of Nigeria’s electric power transmission grid with the full supply, delivery and installation of Siemens-manufactured equipment under the timeline of 18 to 24 months.

Furthermore, the agreement will ensure project sustainability and maintenance with full technology transfer and training for Nigerian engineers at the Transmission Company of Nigeria (TCN).

For the umpteenth time, President Tinubu, in his New Year address to the nation, pledged his administration’s resolve to improve the nation’s electricity supply and development of more power projects.

In his New Year address, President Tinubu noted that he, along with the German Chancellor, at the climate summit in Dubai, pledged their commitments to “a new deal to speed up the delivery of the Siemens Energy power project that will ultimately deliver a reliable supply of electricity to our homes and businesses under the Presidential Power Initiative which began in 2018.”

The President added that his administration is currently carrying out other power projects to “strengthen the reliability of our transmission lines and optimize the integrity of our National grid.”

The Gas Dimension

Presently, over 80 percent of Nigeria’s electricity generation comes from gas. Currently, the price of gas is $2.18, and about 75 percent of the Multi Year Tariff Order going in for gas. Recently, the federal government paid $120 million out of the $1.3 billion indebtedness to gas companies for the supply of gas to run gas-fired power plants.

Earlier in the month, the Nigerian government attributed the main cause of poor power supply in the country to the low supply of gas to generating companies. The Transmission Company of Nigeria (TCN) had in January said that there was a gradual decrease in available generation into the grid due to gas constraints.

Nigeria has over 206 Trillion Cubic Feet (TCF) of natural gas, but has been unable to tap the resource due mainly to lack of investment in the sector, leading to inadequate gas transportation infrastructure. Even the inadequate infrastructure is routinely vandalised. Already, the federal government has set up a committee to investigate the incessant complaints of inadequate gas to power Nigeria’s thermal electricity generation plants and recommend solutions.

A statement said the Minister of State Petroleum Resources (Gas) Ekperikpe Ekpo and Minister of Power, Chief Adebayo Adelabu, jointly set up the inter-ministerial committee in Abuja.
The committee, the ministry said, will suggest ways and means of achieving a steady and sustainable gas supply to power-generating plants to meet both the domestic and industrial needs of Nigerians.
The inter-ministerial committee, the statement stressed, was formed at the end of the meeting between the two ministries. “At the meeting, the challenges causing the low supply of gas to the thermal power plants were outlined to include Decade of Gas legacy debts and vandalism of gas resources infrastructures in the Niger Delta Region.

The Siemens Energy deal

But Siemens Energy , the company believed to have solutions to the nation’s energy challenge said plans to complete the revamping of Nigeria’s power infrastructure will take an additional five years than originally planned due to delays caused by the coronavirus pandemic (COVID-19),Mr. Oladayo Orolu, head of business development and government relations at Siemens Energy, confirmed the development stressing that the deal to rehabilitate and expand the country’s electricity grid by 2025, will now be concluded in 2030.

In July 2019, the federal government signed a power project deal with the German engineering firm to deliver 7,000 megawatts (MW) of electricity to the national grid by 2021, and 11,000 megawatts by 2023 — in phases one and two of the initiative, respectively. The deal was under the presidential power initiative (PPI), a power upgrade and modernisation programme between the Nigerian government and Siemens with the support of the German government.

Alhaji Abubakar Aliyu, the former minister of power, had said the three-phased project would expand Nigeria’s electricity to 25,000MW when completed, and “commence in the first quarter of 2022”. But the project has since been behind schedule.

“The three-phase project was set back by delays in starting the first phase.When we conceptualised this project in 2018, our plan was within two years we should be done with phase one, but then COVID happened, disrupting supply chains, which meant getting raw materials took longer than before”, he stressed.

Experts Proffer A Way Forward

Executive Director of Power Up Initiative, Mr. Adebayo Adegbemile said leadership plays a key role in installing confidence in a sector and settling policies they show direction for the industry that would have the way for investment in the sector.

Mr. Adegbemile noted that the statement around the sale of gas in naira is among the innocuous comments made by the Minister stressing that germane issues like the $1.2million debt to gas suppliers which has directly led to unavailability of gas to GenCos and the World Bank loan for $1.2 million meters that effectively excluded local meter manufacturers, were not being looked at decisively.

Former President of the Chartered Institute of Bankers of Nigeria (CIBN) and Prof. of Economics at Babcock University, Prof. Segun Ajibola said the leadership of the sector should be more aggressive in seeing the immediate review of the GenCos and DisCos architecture, and a faithful implementation of the renewed terms, otherwise, the power sector may continue to witness as much motion without movement.

Prof. Emeritus Wumi Iledare, a specialist in energy economics, said while it could be ill-advised to personalize the failure of the power institutions in Nigeria, the governance of institutions in the country was too individualised and personality focused.

His words: “What I have observed in the power sector in Nigeria is lack of policy continuity. Year -after – year, from Bola Ige to Berth Nnaji to Chinedu Nebo etc. Brilliant ministers, yet no headway to power availability, affordability, accessibility and adaptability because of policy summersault and transactional leadership mindset”, Prof Iledare said.

“The privatization of the power sector was a significant step towards addressing the challenges faced by the nation in this critical area. It aimed to introduce competition, efficiency, and innovation into the sector, with the ultimate goal of providing reliable and affordable electricity to all citizens.

Mr. Tony Elumelu, a Nigerian businessman who controls 15 percent of the country’s electricity market, recently called for a comprehensive overhaul of the electricity grid to address longstanding issues with supply. He emphasized the need for more transmission lines and increased liquidity in the electricity market to address the ongoing challenges in the sector.

His words:” Nigeria can generate around 13 GW of electricity but faces constraints that limit the delivery to the grid to approximately 4 GW. This shortfall forces a significant portion of the population to rely on home generators for power.

”The privatization of 15 power generators in 2013 was expected to improve the situation, but challenges persisted as the transmission lines remained state-owned without substantial investments in expanding the network.”

The banker-turned-electricity merchant proposed the privatization of transmission lines as a solution to enhance the efficiency of electricity delivery.

According to him, the government should attract investors to develop Nigeria’s extensive natural gas reserves, selling them to power generators.

”The distribution segment of the power sector faces challenges as well, with 11 power distribution companies grappling with capital shortages and high tariffs imposed by the country’s electricity market regulator.

”These persistent issues have resulted in frequent blackouts, with a notable “total system collapse” occurring in September of the previous year due to an explosion at a transmission line, causing a complete shutdown of power generation,” he added.

Is the Power Sector jinxed?

With the nation’s electricity sector rapidly going from bad to worse, there have been talks that the sector is jinxed. Those who hold this view strongly believe that some forces, who are multi-millionaires, and deeply entrenched in the generating sets business would not want the energy sector to work as it would take them out of business.

Prof. Emeritus Iledare, a specialist in energy economics, said: “What I have observed in the power sector in Nigeria is a lack of policy continuity. Year -after – year, from Bola Ige to Berth Nnaji to Chinedu Nebo etc. Brilliant ministers, yet no headway to power availability, affordability, accessibility, and adaptability because of policy summersault and transactional leadership mindset”.

Again, a lack of political will to implement policies and step on powerful toes may also encourage people to continue to do things the way they have been doing even when there are clear policy directions.

Vandalisation of Power Sector Equipment

There have been a series of reported cases of vandalism on power facilities across the country – from theft of electric cables to destruction of transformers. An official of the Nigeria Security and Civil Defence Corps died as a result of the bombing of three power transmission towers by vandals along Maiduguri-Damaturu, the Transmission Company of Nigeria announced on Friday,29 December ,2023.

The Federal Government through the Niger Delta Power Holding Company signed a Power Purchase Agreement with utility companies to distribute a total of about 250MW across the country.

A document obtained from NDPHC said the power sale transactions have been signed since the inception of the ‘Light Up Nigeria’ programme currently running under Vice President Kashim Shettima.

Likewise, the TCN raised the alarm over indiscriminate buildings on its Right of Ways in Enugu State.

The Transmission Company of Nigeria (TCN), at the weekend, said one of its critical infrastructure, the Shiroro-Katampe 330 Kilo Volt (kV) transmission line has been vandalised. TCN s General Manager, Public Affairs, Ndidi Mbah, said this in a statement in Abuja on Sunday. According to Ms Mbah, this is the fifth such incident between February and March.

Back to square one where we took off from, several evaluations and suggestions but there is still not enough power to go around. This is an uncomfortable position for any government to be in, without adequate power supply, the hope of an industrialised Nigeria will remain a mirage.