Presidential candidate of the Labour Party (LP) for the 2023 general election, Peter Obi, has voiced his concerns over Nigeria’s epileptic power situation. He emphasized that a sector experiencing 141 national grid collapses in 11 years necessitates immediate, practical solutions.
Obi pointed out that Nigeria’s installed capacity is a mere 13,000 MW, while the demand is approximately 200,000MW. Of the 13,000MW, only about 3,500MW are available for homes and businesses, placing Nigeria at the bottom of the global per capita wattage ranking.
Analysing the situation in a statement, titled: “The collapsing electricity sector,” Obi expressed said the Nigeria electricity supply industry faces real and present danger of collapse despite. He said despite efforts made in more than two decades to initiate a reform the sector, the outcomes have not been encouraging.
He said: “It is absolutely distressing and a story of a low level of managerial capability that the entire nation can be plunged into total darkness for a reasonable period because networks go out because of a lack of diligent attention.”
Obi drew a stark contrast between Nigeria’s power supply and that of African competitors like Egypt and South Africa, which supply about 60,000mw and 58,000mw respectively to their populations of approximately 112m and 59.6m people.
He stated, “This difference in energy wattage has massive implications for human development and economic growth. Nigeria today has the world’s lowest per capita wattage in the world, interestingly lower than those of most of our West African neighbours.”
The presidential hopeful said after consulting with experts in the sector, he identified three major sectors contributing to Nigeria’s power supply crisis: generation, and transmission and distribution. He attributed the challenges in the generation sector to the lack of a regular supply of gas, resulting from the government’s failure over the last eight years to provide adequate gas infrastructure facilities, weak commerciality of gas to power, and failure to control the restiveness of angry youths leading to vandalism.
