Nigeria recently witnessed its sixth power grid collapse of 2024, marking the latest in a series of collapses witnessed on the country’s power grid.
The country earlier witnessed power grid collapse in February, March, April, July, and August 2024, plunging citizens into a blackout.
Background
The country with a population of more than 200 million has only 60% penetration of electricity.
According to the Nigeria National Grid, it currently generates an average of 4,800MW of electricity which is a far cry from the 88,000MW needed to achieve 24-hour stable power supply across the country.
This gap between the current power generation and power needs of the country has placed a strain on the functional power grids nationwide, leading to incessant power grid collapses.
Eko Electric addressing its customers via its Twitter/X handle on Monday 14th October, stated,
“Dear Customer, Kindly be informed there was a system collapse at 18:48hrs which has resulted to 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 would keep you updated as soon as power is restored. Kindly bear with us.”
A relapse however occurred as the grid collapsed again at about 09:17hrs on October, 15th less than 24 hours after the first collapse, ensuring Nigerians remained in darkness.
Government Response
In response to the recent power grid collapse, Minister of Power Adebayo Adelabu states there are plans in place to have power grids in different regions or states to put an end to incessant grid collapses.
He notes that the Electricity Act signed by President Bola Tinubu in 2023 has made it possible to decentralize the power sector which in turn would help the plan to build grids in each region.
“This Electricity Act has decentralised power. It has enabled all the subnational governments, the state government and the local government, to be able to participate in the generation, transmission, and distribution of electricity. We all rely on a single national grid today; if there is a disturbance of the national grid, it affects all 36 states. It shouldn’t be like that. This will enable us to start moving gradually towards having regional groups and possibly having state grids.
“And each of these grids will be removed and shielded from each other. So, if there’s a problem with a particular grid, only the state where it belongs will be affected, not the entire nation. So, this is one of the impacts this Electricity Act will have,”. He said.
“We keep talking about grid collapse. Grid collapse, grid collapse, whether it’s a total collapse, partial collapse, or slight trip-off. This is almost inevitable as it is today, given the state of our power infrastructure, the infrastructure is in deplorable conditions, so why won’t you have trip-offs? Why won’t you have collapses, either total or partial? It will continue to remain like this until we can overhaul the entire infrastructure. What we do now is to make sure that we manage it,”
What is the significance?
The Significance of Nigeria’s decentralization of the power sector is the entrance of private individuals and corporations into the power scene.
This is already in full swing, with Nigerian Businessman Adedeji Adeleke having recently announced his ongoing $2billion power plant due to begin operations in January 2025.
He states that on completion the 1,250-megawatt (MW) power plant will be the biggest in Nigeria and supply electricity to a large number of the Nigerian population in addition to the 15% of Nigeria’s electricity he currently supplies.
