Nigeria has faced persistent challenges in its power sector, a critical element for economic development and quality of life. Despite having substantial energy resources, the country?s power transmission infrastructure has struggled to meet demand, resulting in frequent outages and unreliable service.

In 2024 alone, the National electricity grid collapsed 12 times, resulting in colossal financial losses to households and the manufacturing sector

Despite repeated assurances from relevant government agencies for an improved power sector aimed at transforming the lives of over 200 million Nigerians, especially those operating in the manufacturing sector, fund allocation to power sector in the 2025 proposed Appropriation Bill currently before the National Assembly has shown that there might be no light at the end of the tunnel.

A breakdown of the allocation for the Ministry of Power shows that personnel cost would gulp N6, 273, 058, 012, overhead N 4, 211, 403, 159 and capital projects having the least allocation of N2, 076, 305, 541, 394. Of the over two trillion naira budget for the power sector, total allocation for the Transmission Company of Nigeria(TCN), which is an agency under the supervision of the Federal Ministry of Power, is N270, 483, 946, 996.

The TCN is the only entity in the power sector value chain that is still fully funded and under the control of the Federal Government. The others, which included the distribution companies (Discos) and generating companies (Gencos), have been privatised.

Speaking during a budget presentation at the National Assembly in Abuja last week, the Minister of Power, Mr. Adebayo Adelabu, disclosed that the TCN would require about N2.77 trillion to complete 149 ongoing projects nationwide, an amount bigger than the entire budget of the ministry in 2025.

A statement by the minister?s spokesman, Bolaji Tunji, which quoted Adelabu, stated that the completion of the projects will help to improve the country?s electricity supply.

Besides, he informed the lawmakers that approval had also been given for the commencement of the second phase of the Siemens power project under the Presidential Power Initiative (PPI) with 95 per cent completion of the pilot stage in 2024.

?I am happy to appear before you today to address you on what we have been able to achieve since last year and what is expected of us as a ministry this year. For the TCN alone, we will need about N2.779 trillion to enable us to execute the about 149 projects we are currently engaged in all over the country.

?Our total budget as a ministry is not even up to this, but as the saying goes, half bread is better than none. I?m telling you so that you can be aware of the kind of money that is needed in the ministry for us to address our electricity challenges. We need your cooperation and collaboration in achieving the mandate of Mr. President in electricity supply to Nigerians,? the minister said.

Adelabu had at a recent power sector forum in Lagos said: ?Nigeria needs about $262 billion in investment to meet the expansion needs of the power sector by 2030?,.

He added that the government had set an ambitious target to generate about 30,000MW of electricity by 2030, with renewable energy contributing 30 per cent to Nigeria?s energy mix.

The minister acknowledged that Nigeria?s current power sector infrastructure could not effectively generate the much-needed electricity for the country.

He explained that Nigeria currently has a low power generation, transmission, and distribution capacity of about 5,625MW, 8,500MW, and 8,425MW respectively, which were inadequate to even reach the targeted power generation of 20,00OMW in the short-term.

Responding to Saturday Sun inquiry on the development, President, Consumer Protection Network, Mr. Kunle Olubiyo, said the N270 billion allocation to TCN is no doubt a scratch on the surface, a drop in the ocean that is inconsequentially insufficient.

He added that the indebtedness by TCN to local contractors is about N500 billion, lamenting that these humongous debt are projects executed and successfully delivered to TCN over six years ago but payment to individual indigenous contractors have perpetually remained a mirage .

?What this implies is that critical projects are being handled with kid?s gloves and approached as child play. In the immediate, medium and long term, the 149 critical transmission infrastructure network improvement projects may suffer adversely from inadequate funding and may remain a mirage, leading to abandoned projects.

He explained that the frequent system collapses may remain unabated for a very long time to come as long as Nigerian Government, as represented by relevant institutions continue to pay lip service to investments in the power sector.

Also speaking, Partner, Bloomfield Law Practice, a firm with specialty in power sector contracting drafting and advisory services for investors, Mr. Ayodele Oni, corroborated the views of Olubiyo.

Oni pointed out that the allocation of N270,483 billion to TCN might not make any major difference in repositioning the power sector but might serve as a tip of the iceberg.

?Contrary to the projection that the sum of N270,483,946,996 was allocated to TCN, it has been reported that the Minister of Power, when addressing the Senate Committee on Power, stated that there is zero appropriation for TCN and beseeched the committee to look into this by appropriating funds for TCN.

However, the Minister stated that the ministry is willing to complete between 8 and 12 of the TCN priority projects with a projected sum of N25,000,000,000.00,??.

The power expert argued that irrespective of the amount to be set aside for TCN and considering that the total budget for the Ministry of Power is about N2,000,000,000,000.00, the allocation to TCN will not be based on the completion of the ongoing 149 projects, rather, it will be based on addressing the operational failures of the TCN and reduce instances of national grid collapse, priority projects, improve the welfare of personnel, vandalism of power assets, overhead costs amongst other things responsible for the effective functioning of TCN. He urged the Government to urgently address the challenge of vandalism and other security concerns that contribute to the overall performance of the electricity supply to different parts of the country.

Oni advised that the ultimate solution is to import technology that can help regulate electricity transmission and power asset security.

?Where the foregoing is put into consideration, it might improve the country?s electricity supply in the year 2025,?

In his views, the Managing Director of Tripod Industrial Services, a firm with focus on engineering, procurement, installation, commissioning and maintenance of electro-mechanical plants and equipment for the power sector and large businesses, Mr. Ademola Raheem, queried the capital projects making up the entire N2.07 trillion budget of the Power Ministry.

?What projects are listed in the capital projects? fund of N2.07trn?. To the best of my knowledge, the Federal Government is only responsible for TCN, all the gencos are privately owned and they all have Power Purchase Agreement (PPAs) through the Nigeria Bulk Electricity Trader (NBET).

Apart from the Mambilla hydropower project, I?m not too sure the Federal Government is investing so much in power generation.

He advised the Federal Government to invest heavily in gas gathering, production and transportation, noting that many gencos are presently operating at suboptimal levels due to non-availability of gas which will not encourage new gencos to spring up.

?We need to encourage investors in renewable energy to create their own mini grids and sell power to underserved communities at appropriate rates.?

But, the National President, Nigerian Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (NIEEE), Mr. Felix Olu, explained that there are many indicators government looks at to fix its budgetary plans, saying no one in government can ever have adequate budgetary allocation in Nigeria, especially the power sector.

On the frequent grid collapses, Olu insisted that power challenges are numerous and have been with the country for a very long time.

?Solving the problem is a long race and not a dash. Grid collapse is also one of the issues that are possible on a power grid. Our challenge is the completely unacceptable frequency. The causes are numerous, including obsolete infrastructure, insecurity, energy losses and theft, untoward practices on the part of corporate role players in the power value chain (like load rejection, reluctance to provide metering services etc.), corruption, government bureaucracy, lack of adequate capacity building (both manpower and infrastructure), among others

?There is no option for government for now, but to improve on the frequency of grid failure. I believe there will be significant improvement going by the numerous actions of government. Some of the required actions from government, are not necessarily from power sector budget.

?To adequately address the challenges of the sector, especially the transmission sector, the government, being the supervisor of the entire sector, needs to engage all relevant stakeholders for support, especially independent professionals bodies, to have all hands on deck.

?At the NIEEE, we have approached government (the minister) a number of times to make our contributions, but the openness is not welcoming enough. We also presented our opinions on various challenges, having sighted them far ahead. We are grappling with some of those challenges right now, which we believe they could have been avoided if the insight was heeded.? (Saturday Sun)

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