Fashola speaks on Nigeria’s infrastructure deficit at Chatam House today

Strategies to successfully reform Nigeria’s power and infrastructure will be the focus of a Chatam House research event taking place in London today.
Babatunde Fashola, Nigeria’s minister of power, works and housing, is billed to feature at the event. The cost of Nigeria’s infrastructure deficit to its development outcomes, business environment and economic growth will be the issue participants will discuss.
“At this event, Minister for Power, Works and Housing, Babatunde Raji Fashola, will discuss the country’s urgent infrastructure needs, his reform priorities and challenges to implementation. He will outline the government’s ‘Roadmap for Change’ and discuss the roles of the public and private sectors in supporting the transformation of Nigeria’s infrastructure,” organisers of the event, said.
The event will examine efforts made over the years to improve Nigeria’s civil infrastructure, which has been thwarted by corruption, inefficiency and a lack of funding, and in the case of power supply, by an aging distribution network and lacking gas supply.
With a mere 40 percent geographical coverage and transmission capabilities of about 6,000 gigawatts, Nigeria’s transmission infrastructure comprises about 6,680km of 330 kV lines, 7,780km of 132kV lines, 330/132kV substations with installed transformation capacity of 10,166 MVA and 132/32/11kV substations with installed transformation capacity of 11,660MVA. It suffers average transmission loss of about 9 percent, which has led the ministry of power to encourage more embedded power generation projects.
Power generation peaked at around 5,000mw, early this year before it declined significantly to around 1,000mw – 2,500mw a day, far below the estimated 170,000 – 180,000mw required.
Government reform that has privatised generation and distribution aims to improve the performance of the sector, which relies on commercially viable projects and tariff payments, increased earlier this year is threatened by weak transmission lines and litigation over tariffs.
Much of the Nigeria’s infrastructure is also in a state of disrepair and is a significant impediment to internal and regional trade.