2013: Nigeria’s year of power?

The year 2013 has been an eventful one for Nigeria and Nigerians. One sector that has witnessed remarkable events is undoubtedly the power sector. On November 1, 2013, Nigerians saw the historic hand-over of 14 out of the successor companies carved out of the defunct Power Holding Company of Nigeria (PHCN) by the federal government to private investors. The nation recorded what was widely seen as a significant milestone as the private sector took over the nation’s power sector.

Nigeria’s power sector, which had operated for several decades as a state monopoly, with the federal government having the exclusive rights to own electricity generation, transmission and distribution facilities, is now being driven by private investors, whose entry is expected to revamp the sector and impact positively on the nation’s power supply.

In early October the president, Goodluck Jonathan, unveiled the brand new434 MW Geregu thermal plant in Kogi State. Before then, shortly after the government had handed over share certificates to those who had bought controlling stake in Power Holding Company of Nigeria.The unveiling of Geregu was also followed by with the inauguration of the 500 megawatts Omotosho Power plant.

These milestone events in the power sector have indeed raised the hopes of Nigerians. But it appears that these hopes have become dimmer as the year closes, with a downturn in power supply in many parts of the country since the much celebrated the hand-over to the new private sector operators. Many Nigerians celebrated the Christmas without electricity, this is because the power situation has deteriorated with just a few cities and towns enjoying very little supplies.

This dismal power supply situation has been explained to be a fall out of inadequate gas supplies and vandalisation of gas pipelines even as some analysts believe that the new power operators are still battling with technical issues associated with manpower inadequacy.

Some sources within the power industry are of the view that there would not be any appreciable improvement in power supply until end of January when the fixing of the damaged Ecravos – warri pipelines would be completed.

Just as the Nigerian Gas company is bout completing the new Escravos –Warri gas pipeline which would have increased the through put of the pipeline from one billion standard cubic feet of gas per day to two billion, it was bomber in June this year.

Before the bombed blast that damaged the pipeline, the Nigerian Gas Company NGS was supplying 420 million standard feet of gas through the two pipelines .But since the incident the volume of gas supplies to the power plants has been reduced to 300 million standard cubic feet of gas which is distributed between the power sector and other industries. The stranded 120 million standard cubic feet of gas is capable of generating 400mw.

This means that 400 megawatts of electricity is lost daily due to the incident. A situation that has affected the generation capabilities of power plants like Egbin power plant which now generate between 500 and 600 megawatts as against it installed capacity of 1320 megawatts.

Assessing the developments in the industry, analysts describe the entry of the private sector as the beginning of good things, but also remark that it is the starting point of a long-drawn journey fraught with pitfalls as the new owners may struggle to undo decades of rot in the electricity sector.

Nigeria, with a population of about 170 million people, is estimated to need about 40,000 megawatts (MW) of electricity over the next decade, but currently has less than 6,000MW of available capacity.