Power sector cyclical deficiencies demand emergency
It is now disheartening that epilepsy of power has grown to a height of national disorder at a length that is distasteful. Running into months, black-outs have become a sour herb placed before Nigerians. While the hitherto existing conditions have been distasteful, the recurrent collapse of the national grid recently has seen total blackouts frowning at the Country. Recently, seeing communities going into black-outs for days, without the glimpse of electricity supply, have made the narratives bitterly sour.
Both households and businesses would have to suffer the consequences making conditions more unconducive for the populace. Glitches in generation of power recently have seen the Generation Companies falling below capacity, as the posture of counter-accusation among the operating lines of the sector keep rising with disgust per time.
Lamentations have continued to emanate from various quarters as power consumers keep decrying the epilepsy of electricity with no reflection of reduction in billings, applicable to many who have not been captured within the prepaid metering system. The situation for businesses has been unsavoury as manufacturers and other small businesses whose line of production rely heavily on electricity, continue to face harsh conditions with rising cost of production threatening their fortunes. Recently, manufacturers have lamented how over 40percent of their cost of production goes into sourcing for power. Resort to alternative sources of generating supply has not been so healthy for businesses, particularly as the prices of petroleum products especially diesel continue to soar high.
The pursuit of power supply in the Country over the years has remained in promises and documents, as the actualisation remains blurry and unrealistic. By every index of the current architecture, it is apparent that the Country is still very much far from the desideratum, particularly as recent realities see generation from power plants falling as low as about 2,000MW.
Privatisation exercises in the sector have thus, not yielded the desideratum for stable and reliable power supply. It is disheartening to hear a Country as Nigeria with the huge economic demands, struggling to sustain even a generation status of 5,000MW, which in itself is minute to the demands.
According to USAID, “Nigeria is the largest economy in sub-Saharan Africa, but limitations in the power sector constrain growth. Nigeria is endowed with large oil, gas, hydro and solar resources, and it has the potential to generate 12,522MW of electric power from existing plants. On most days, however, it is only able to dispatch around 4,000 MW, which is insufficient for a country of over 195 million people. The Nigerian power sector experiences many broad challenges related to electricity policy enforcement, regulatory uncertainty, gas supply, transmission system constraints, and major power sector planning shortfalls that have kept the sector from reaching commercial viability.”
The insufficiency of the hydro-electric and thermal/fossil fuel power plants (gas-fired plants) is largely over blown in the power supply mix architecture. It is known fact that Nigeria’s generation capacity which is largely driven by gas-fired power plants falls short of the potentials of generation in the Country, and as well, below the demands of the economy and the teeming population of over 200 million people. The call for alternatives to develop other sources of power for a virile sector, resting on the huge potentials of available resources with robust power supply mix, has been a call that has not yielded much response, sufficient to reflect readiness on the part of the government to fix power problems in Nigeria.
Nigerians are largely suffering the brunts of the deficiencies in productivity of the power architecture in the Country. At a time when the yearnings for interventions to salvage the restive nature of the economy is alarming, the plunging of the power sector is by all means undesirable. Its rippling effects in a cynical deformity is such capable of further crippling the economy, while posing stiffening strings of socio-political strains, which in the entire reflections, pose nothing but more hydra-headed confusion for the society.
Increasing lamentations by the larger part of the populace do not present the Government in good light. It has become pertinent that the latter as the regulator of conduct and driver of the working fabrics of sectors of the economy, come alive to its duty to restore sanity in the sector, and beyond the erstwhile subsisting capacity which has largely hover around 4.500-5,000MW, drive the sector to move beyond the deficiencies in production to the height of productivity commensurate with the economic demands of the Country.
