- Time for Fed Govt to take firm stand on the power crisis
Most Nigerians would probably shrug off the latest information from the Association of Power Generation Companies (APGC) that the country loses a daily average of 4,210 megawatts of power to the twin factors of weak transmission grid and poor distribution infrastructure. For the simple fact that Nigerians have heard basically the same thing times without number, and to the extent that it does little to relieve their agonies, most Nigerians would probably pass it off as merely selling alibis in place of their simple demand for service improvement and quality.
Yet, to deny the merit of the APGC position is to miss out on the issues at the heart of the crisis that not only threatens to cripple the entire sector but to take the nation’s economy down with it.
In fact, the picture as painted by the APGC, though hardly new, must be seen as troubling as it is revealing. According to the association, current available generation capacity is 8,169MW. Of this, the Transmission Company of Nigeria (TCN) can only wheel out 5,500MW – leaving 2,500MW of idle power. As if to compound the cycle of programmed losses, the distribution companies (Discos) in all are only able to distribute 4,500MW leaving yet another 1,000MW of generation capacity unutilised.
Even the above would appear a best-case scenario considering the specific claim by APGC that the Gencos were in fact only allowed to generate 3,959MW between January and August, thus losing an average of 4,210MW daily.
That is not all. APGC claims further that of the over 4,000MW wheeled by TCN in first quarter of this year, the Discos only remitted an average of 20 per cent (800MW) of the power as revenue to the Nigerian Bulk Electricity Trading Company. In other words, the value of 7,200MW power delivered by the Gencos could not be accounted for.
While such quantum losses at a time the country continues to grope in darkness is inexplicable, it is not difficult to finger the chief culprit. It is the Federal Government that continues to betray a failure of will, even when the solution is all too obvious. We are here referring to a government whose wholly-owned transmission company still lags far behind in terms of its ability to evacuate the generated power to such an extent that the APGC is currently talking of a whopping 2,500MW capacity gap. That gap, by the way, comes to one-third of the current capacity – something that would ordinarily be deemed modest by any standard–that could not be wheeled into the grid simply because TCN is not ready. Considering that the country has been in this sorry pass for so long, the question bears asking: how long would it take the Federal Government to undertake the matching investment in that critical segment in which it holds the monopoly?
A lot has been said of the Discos as being the weakest link in the power delivery chain. That may well be. Whereas Nigerians appear to have long lost faith in the ability of the current operators to make the difference, with their sentiments finding validation through such initiatives as the Nasir El-Rufai-led ad-hoc committee to review the ownership of the DisCos in November 2019, the final review of the five-year performance agreement with the DisCos expected to have been concluded by December 31, 2019, and of late, the National Electricity Regulatory Commission’s planned forensic audit to determine their commercial viability, government’s response has been one of continuing vacillation. More than merely highlighting the dysfunctions that have held the sector down therefore, the APGC averments are a wake-up call on the government to take firm and decisive steps to save the industry from imminent collapse – and fast too.
