The Association of Nigerian Electricity Distributors (ANED) (popularly known as DisCos) said Nigeria needs to generate about 33,000 megawatts to have a stable electricity supply, condemning the unstable electricity supply across the country. The Executive Director for Research and Advocacy at ANED, Mr. Sunday Oduntan, said this at a stakeholder workshop organized jointly with the MacArthur Foundation at Yola.
Oduntan lamented that in the past three weeks, the country had not generated more than 4,000 megawatts of electricity while calling for more investment in the energy sector to address the problem.
The workshop theme was ‘Building consumer awareness and strengthening the customer service capacity of electricity distribution my companies.’
According to him:
“In Nigeria, they say we have a population of 210 million and about 32 million households are connected to the grid. Nigeria has a heavy deficit. The rule of thumb all over the world on the production of electricity says you do 1,000MW per one million population for people to have uninterrupted electricity.
“So, with 32 million people having access to electricity, meaning they are connected to an electricity source, you need to generate 32,000MW. Today in Nigeria, what we produce is 4,000MW. In the last three weeks, we have never done 4,000MW. So, we need 32,000MW to ensure a stable electricity supply to every household connected to the grid”.
Oduntan said since the unbundling of the Power Holding Company of Nigeria in 2013, the government had taken steps to ensure improvement in the power supply but added that the problem remained that of cost recovery and profitability of investment on the part of DisCos.
He noted that today’s power sector is different from the power sector of 2013, adding, “What we collect till today as DisCos has never been up to the energy sent out. So, we have never been able to match the energy received with cash.”
cc: Punch Ng
