Nigeria Has 135,000-Megawatt Dream as Government Aligns Ministries

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Written by Richard Finlayson, Senior International Editor for Industrial Info Resources (Sugar Land, Texas)--Professor Bath Nnaji, Nigeria's Minister of Power, said that the country needs to generate 135,000 megawatts (MW) of electricity to effectively power the country's economy. This represents more than 15 times the current generation performance. Nnaji was speaking at a presidential workshop titled "Dismantling Barriers to Achieving Our Power Sector Vision." President Goodluck Jonathan chaired the meeting.

The workshop was to ensure alignment between the ministries of power and petroleum resources to ensure that the production of power could go forward. Issues impeding progress and the need to get stakeholders involved were examined with a view to seeing real delivery of power projects.

Nnaji said that the country would exploit a range of fuels for power current baseline of power generation, including gas, hydro, coal, wind and solar, to achieve the target, adding that the current baseline of power generation was 3,600 MW out of the 5,700 MW of available capacity.

The minister listed the non-availability of gas, a lack of proper maintenance, water management issues, and transmission constraints as factors for the inability of power plants to achieve maximum generation capacity.

Diezani Allison-Madueke, the Minister of Petroleum Resources, said the current challenges in the power sector were a result of "gross misalignment" in terms of gas supply to power plants. She said that the location of some plants made it difficult to access gas. The situation had arisen because both ministries were not working together before the contracts for those power stations were awarded.

Poor funding for projects and poor performances from Power Holding Company of Nigeria (PHCN) and the National Integrated Power Project (NIPP) were some of the sector's constraints, she said.

Sam Amadi, the Chairman of the National Electricity Regulation Commission (NERC), said that the stakeholders should privatize all generation plants no later than mid- 2013.

President Jonathan said the country had gas and other energy sources, even coal, and should not be talking about only 10 MW or 5 MW at this stage.

Having observed a number of Nigerian power initiatives crash and burn over the past decades, Industrial Info believes that the talk at the workshop was on target, but now it is time to walk the walk. For a country with a population of 160 million and aspirations to social and industrial development, 135,000 MW is a respectable target. This is much better that putting a too-modest target constrained by what is currently available, which is part of the president's point. But the worry is that a grandiose target continues to obscure the problems on the ground--and people continue to use backyard generators to keep their lives and the economy chugging along.

For related information, see March 27, 2012, article - GE Signs $10 Billion Agreement for 10,000 MW Power Build in Nigeria, and March 13, 2012, article - Nigeria's Power Regulator Opens the Door for Independent Power Generation and Distribution.

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