What a systemic shame!

Monday Column By Hameed M. Bello, PhD

hamdbelo@yahoo.co.uk

‘FG woos investors to power sector’ (January 18 2011), ‘FG committed to investing in renewable energy’ (March 13, 2012), ‘Nigeria’s power sector and the way forward’ (Sept 4, 2021), the list of headlines on government rhetoric on power is endless. And now, out of frustration comes yet another headline from a report on the House of Representatives: ‘Nigerians tired of blackout’. These headlines reflect on the elusive solution to inadequate and unstable power supply. And since the desired outcome has refused to come, more will continue to be said and written on this subject that affects all. 

Members of the House of Representatives Committee on Power, on Tuesday March 22 had cause to direct the Power Ministry to take concrete actions to solve the current nationwide blackout instead of always constructing theories that do not translate into power supply to Nigerians. The lawmakers were expressing frustration over the apparent lack of seriousness of power agencies to fix power.

It comes across as a shame for a 62 year old man to be spoon-fed as though he were a toddler. Or he is still learning the basic kindergarten stuff when he ought to be a master or a teacher himself. This analogy brings to mind the inability of successive governments to fix power after about 62 years of gaining independence. Whether it is betrayal, sabotage, collusion, incompetence, corruption or international conspiracy, this failure has definitely exposed the political leadership to unfavourable public perception. Electric power supply, just like iron and steel development which has faced similar fate of either sabotage, corruption or lack of political will, is a bedrock of sustainable growth, but here we are after over 62 years grappling with between 4,000 to 5000 megawatts of unreliable power generation. Apart from the hiccups in transmission, we are helplessly at the mercy of the distribution companies which have regularly imposed suffocating tariff regimes.

Available record shows that with an installed generation capacity of over 5,300 MW, Ghana our next door neighbor less than one hour flight from Lagos or Abuja has one of the highest rates of access to electricity in Africa, with its power supply consisting of 38% hydroelectricity and 61% thermal, and the remaining 1% being attributed to solar power as of Dec 23 2021.  The current population of Ghana is 32,190,054 as of Friday, March 25, 2022, based on Worldometer elaboration of the latest United Nations data. Ghana got her independence from colonial rule in March 1957 while Nigeria got her’s in October 1960. To that extent both countries are contemporaries, but certainly not in the area of stable power supply. Nigeria is lagging behind despite its demographic advantage ahead of Ghana. The current population of Nigeria is 214,923,333 as of Thursday, March 24, 2022, based on Worldometer elaboration of the latest United Nations data. This is equivalent to 2.64% of the total world population. One expects that more people should give rise to more good thinking and in turn more good results, but that seems not the case in our case in Nigeria.

As a way out, Nigeria could channel more energy to solar power as alternative to hydro electric power generation and over reliance on fuel and gas. Many industrialized nations have installed significant solar power capacity into their electrical grids to supplement or provide an alternative to conventional energy sources while an increasing number of less developed nations have turned to solar to reduce dependence on expensive imported fuels. Long distance transmission allows remote renewable energy resources to displace fossil fuel consumption. Solar power plants use one of two technologies: Photovoltaic (PV) systems which use solar panels, either on rooftops or in ground-mounted solar farms, converting sunlight directly into electric power; and concentrated solar power (CSP, also known as “concentrated solar thermal”) plants which use solar thermal energy to make steam that is thereafter converted into electricity by a turbine. Worldwide growth of photovoltaics is extremely dynamic and varies from one country to another. By the end of 2014, cumulative photovoltaic capacity increased by more than 40 gigawatt (GW) and reached at least 178 GW, sufficient to supply 1 percent of the world’s total electricity consumption of currently 18,400 TWh. As in the year before, the top installers of 2014 were China, followed by Japan and the United States, while the United Kingdom emerged as new European leader ahead of Germany and France. Germany remains for one more year the world’s largest producer of solar power with an overall installed capacity of 38.2 GW. The newcomers of the year were Chile and South Africa, which entered straight into the world’s Top 10 ranking of added capacity. There are now 20 countries around the world with a cumulative PV capacity of more than one gigawatt. Thailand, the Netherlands, and Switzerland, all crossed the one gigawatt-mark in 2014. The available solar PV capacity in Italy, Germany and Greece is now sufficient to supply between 7% and 8% of their respective domestic electricity consumption. 

The Chinese ambassador to Nigeria, Mr. Cui Jianchun recently made a suggestion on power situation in Nigeria which the Nigerian government could exploit diplomatically. While speaking in an interview at the commissioning of the new terminal of the Lagos international airport recently,  Mr Jianchun recalled the incident he encountered in Abuja the morning he left for Lagos for the event. He said the pilot of the aircraft that flew him to Lagos had apologised some number of times for the delay in their take-off due to power failure at the airport. That incident made him understand better that Nigeria needs to do all within its powers to handle the power crisis. 

He said since China is a concerned partner of Nigeria in development, he would apply all the push he can to convince Chinese investors in this vital sector to show interest in Nigeria and assist in surmounting this obstacle that frustrates the country’s many sincere efforts towards modern growth and infrastructure provision. This is a window that could be built upon as long as the overall interest of the country is neither mortgaged nor compromised.

 Nigeria could be making inroads as the leading economy and home to some of the wealthiest individuals in Africa, but as of Wednesday, August 05, 2020, the country was not ranked among the top 10 African countries with stable electricity. Quoting 2019 Electricity Access Report, Africa Facts Zone posted that Mauritius and Tunisia had 100% power supply. Ghana made the list at number nine with 84%, 1.1% above South Africa. On the list, Mauritius, and Tunisia ranked first and second with a 100% electricity supply. Egypt, Algeria, Morocco, and Seychelles ranked 99.8%, 99.1%, and 99% respectively. No country on the list had below 80% electricity access as South Africa and Ghana, nations on ninth and 10th positions had 84.3% and 84.2% power access rates.

 While Nigeria plans to generate 30,000MW by 2030 with 3,000MW coming from renewables and 27,000MW from its power plants to serve its over 200 million people, power generation still hovers just above 5,000 MW despite the 13,000MW installed capacity over eight years after the sector was privatised. From generation to transmission and distribution, Nigerians continue to ask for more, in their bid to get brighter homes. This should not be negotiable.