FG APPROVES NEW EASTERN-WESTERN POWER GRID TO TACKLE RECURRING NATIONAL GRID COLLAPSES
Read Time:2 Minute, 47 Second
By Aishat Momoh. O.
The Federal Government has approved plans to develop new eastern and western electricity grids as part of efforts to address Nigeria’s recurring national grid collapses.
The Minister of Power, Joseph Tegbe, disclosed this at a recent HBSAN energy conference in Lagos, where he outlined plans to strengthen the country’s transmission infrastructure.
Tegbe said the government was preparing to commence the procurement process for the projects, adding that Nigerians could begin to see their benefits within two to three years.
He also revealed that a nationwide technical audit of electricity infrastructure had commenced to identify faults, assess the condition of existing facilities and determine priority areas for intervention.
The minister said the government had divided the country into three energy zones, with Lagos and the Abuja corridors accounting for a significant share of electricity demand.
“We have clustered Nigeria into three energy zones. The first one is the one that demands 50 per cent. If you fix Lagos and you fix the Abuja corridors, you’ve solved more than half of the problem of Nigeria. Because you can’t do that alone based on operational efficiency, you also have to build out your grid.
“The President has approved that we commence the process of building out the grid: East and Western grid. We’re going through the procurement process, but it’s something you’ll see the benefits in two to three years,” he said.
Tegbe explained that the technical audit was designed to establish the specific causes of faults across the transmission network and ensure that government interventions addressed the actual problems.
According to him, the exercise would prevent the misallocation of funds to equipment that did not require repairs or replacement while more pressing infrastructure challenges remained unresolved.
“We have started a technical audit across the entire country to say where do we have issues, and what issues specifically do we have. I don’t want to fix transformer issues where I have conductor and relay problems. I don’t want to fix insulators where the challenges I actually have are towers.
“So, we will finish that technical audit in the next couple of weeks. When we finish it, we then target our prioritised areas,” the minister said.
He attributed some of the challenges facing the transmission network to ageing infrastructure, noting that some facilities had been in service for several decades.
The minister said some transmission towers and lines dated back to the era of the Electricity Corporation of Nigeria (ECN), which preceded the National Electric Power Authority (NEPA).
“This government has inherited a problem of 50 years. Before I became the Minister of Power, honestly, I used to think that everybody in the power sector just didn’t know their left from right. But the reality is, some of the towers have gone down with some of the transmission lines there.
“When I went to the site, I saw some of them carrying the logo of ECN. Many people in this room might not know what ECN is. ECN predated NEPA. So, some of these things were built 50 years ago. That is the reality,” he stated.
The proposed grid expansion and ongoing technical audit are expected to guide the government’s efforts to modernise transmission infrastructure and improve the reliability of electricity supply across the country.
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