The Association of Nigerian Electricity Distributors has decried the unstable power supply across the country, saying Nigeria needs to generate about 33,000 Megawatts to have stable electricity.
ANED’s Executive Director, Research and Advocacy, Mr Sunday Oduntan, said this in Yola at a stakeholders’ workshop organised in collaboration with the MacArthur Foundation.
Oduntan lamented that the nation over the past three weeks did not have more than 4,000MW of power supply while calling for increased investment in the power sector to address the problem.
The workshop had the theme ‘Building consumer awareness and strengthening the customer service capacity of electricity distribution my companies’.
He added, “In Nigeria, they say we have a population of 210 million and about 32 million households are connected to the grid. Nigeria has a heavy deficit. The rule of thumb all over the world on the production of electricity says you do 1,000MW per one million population for people to have uninterrupted electricity.
“So, with 32 million people having access to electricity, meaning they are connected to an electricity source, you need to generate 32,000MW. Today in Nigeria, what we produce is 4,000MW. In the last three weeks, we have never done 4,000MW. So, we need 32,000MW to ensure a stable electricity supply to every household connected to the grid.”
Oduntan said since the unbundling of Power Holding Company of Nigeria, in 2013, the government had taken steps to ensure improvement in power supply but added that the problem remained that of cost recovery and profitability of investment on the part of DisCos.
According to him, the power sector today is different from the power sector of 2013, adding, “What we collect till today as DisCos has never been up to the energy sent out. So, the energy received we have never been able to match it with cash.”