facing
the nation's power sector.
Sir, what is the present state of power
generation in Nigeria?
The picture
for Nigeria's electricity as of now is
not a very rosy story to tell. We have
an installed capacity of about 6,000MW.
However, because of lack of prior
maintenance, it is generally about 50
percent availability. And if you add
that to the problems we have had like
the breaking of the pipelines in the
Niger Delta, we lost 30 percent of our
power. So, the current story may not be
a rosy one. However, with the potential
to bring in 11 power plants for the
Nigerian Integrated Power Project (NIPP),
we are very hopeful that we can get our
10,000MW.
What
are the major problems militating
against satisfactory electricity
distribution in Nigeria?
They are
many. Before now, Power Holding Company
of Nigeria was in charge of all three
sectors of the business, generation,
transmission and distribution. They
depended on national budget to do their
planning, equipment and system upgrade
and maintenance. Unfortunately, those
payments and government votes have not
been on a stable track. The problem with
distribution in Nigeria is as follows:
Network is weak. There is a lot of power
theft, what we call non-technical
losses, that is, non-accounted for
energy, illegal connections. There is
also the problem with people paying
their electricity bills, both the
citizens and governments be it federal,
state or local. If you consume power
that is not free, and you do not pay for
it, you cause a problem in the system.
When you look at the two problems; lack
of system planning and funding, and
having a poor network to operate and
then non-payment of regular bills, you
can see that this is not a good mixture.
What are the main constraints for
transmission and generation?
The problem with the transmission
network has been that the network is too
long and does not have redundancy. So
you have a single line going from Kaduna
to Jos and beyond. If something happens
in between, as it did recently, about
eight states were in the dark for about
eight days. Now with the NIPP, they are
going to install dual circuit lines
around the country that will be fed from
different power stations. These lines
will increase reliability in the
transmission network.
The other aspect of transmission network
that will change is that it is going to
go under private management. Government
will not privatize transmission network.
It will remain a national asset but
managed by private hands. |
