The Federal Government has approved plans to develop new Eastern and Western electricity grids as part of efforts to address Nigeria’s recurring national grid collapses.
The Minister of Power, Joseph Tegbe, disclosed this at the recent HBSAN energy conference in Lagos, saying the projects were expected to begin yielding benefits within two to three years.
Tegbe said the government was preparing to commence the procurement process for the projects, following approval by President Bola Tinubu.
He explained that Nigeria had been divided into three energy zones, with Lagos and the Abuja corridors accounting for a significant share of the country’s electricity demand.
“We have clustered Nigeria into three energy zones. The first one is the one that demands 50 per cent. If you fix Lagos and you fix the Abuja corridors, you’ve solved more than half of the problem of Nigeria. Because you can’t do that alone based on operational efficiency, you also have to build out your grid.
“The President has approved that we commence the process of building out the grid: East and Western grid. We’re going through the procurement process, but it’s something you’ll see the benefits in two to three years,” the minister said.
He also disclosed that the government had commenced a nationwide technical audit of electricity infrastructure to identify faults and determine which facilities required urgent repairs or replacement.
According to him, the exercise would help ensure that resources were directed towards the actual causes of transmission failures rather than being spent on the wrong equipment.
“We have started a technical audit across the entire country to say where do we have issues, and what issues specifically do we have. I don’t want to fix transformer issues where I have conductor and relay problems. I don’t want to fix insulators where the challenges I actually have are towers.
“So, we will finish that technical audit in the next couple of weeks. When we finish it, we then target our prioritised areas,” he said.
The minister attributed some of the challenges confronting the transmission network to ageing infrastructure, noting that several facilities had been in operation for decades.
He said some transmission towers and lines dated back to the era of the Electricity Corporation of Nigeria (ECN), which preceded the National Electric Power Authority (NEPA).
“This government has inherited a problem of 50 years. Before I became the Minister of Power, honestly, I used to think that everybody in the power sector just didn’t know their left from right. But the reality is, some of the towers have gone down with some of the transmission lines there.
“When I went to the site, I saw some of them carrying the logo of ECN. Many people in this room might not know what ECN is. ECN predated NEPA. So, some of these things were built 50 years ago. That is the reality,” Tegbe stated.