The Minister of Power, Adebayo Adelabu, has attributed the frequent collapse of the national power grid to old and dilapidated infrastructure.
He went on to say that the national grid infrastructure dates back 50 years to when it was constructed, citing the transmission lines dotting the northern region, which he said are currently weak, while the towers are falling apart and the substations are unable to aid power distribution to households.
Adelabu revealed the challenges plaguing the sector to State House correspondents on Monday, shortly after meeting with President Bola Tinubu at the Presidential Villa, Abuja.
He was reacting to complaints about the incessant national grid collapse, a development that is denying most Nigerian citizens power supplies yet compelling them to pay exorbitant electricity bills.
“Before the recent one, the last disturbance of the grid was about four months ago, which meant that we have been managing the grid.
“Let me tell you the truth of the matter: we have old infrastructure. We have a national grid that is more than 50 years old. We have a national grid whose transmission lines are weak, the towers are falling, and the substations, the transformers are old.
“In fact, the transformer that actually exploded in Jebba was 47 years old. We’ve been trying to revamp and change them, but they cannot all be changed overnight,” Adelabu lamented before reporters.
Recall that the national grid has collapsed no fewer than seven times between January and October 2024, a development that is causing widespread condemnation and calls for urgent action.
Recently, the grid collapsed again in the South-East states of Anambra, Ebonyi, and Enugu, as well as in some states in the North-East and North-West regions of the country.
Adelabu, who confided in the President about the constraints of insecurity in restoring power to the northern region, however, got the backing of Tinubu to deploy security personnel to guard workers tasked with repairing the failed power infrastructure.
He revealed that personnel deployed to the north to restore power usually complained of insecurity, occasioned by bandit attacks.
He said, “We discussed the root causes of these blackouts, which are basically due to the vandalization of the transmission lines of the Shiroro-Kaduna line, which is the major line that supplies electricity to the north, and the Transmission Company of Nigeria (TCN) has already set out to fix this line.
“What they have asked for, which has been provided to them now, is security cover from the National Security Adviser through the Chief of Army Staff and Chief of Air Staff to enable them to restore the damaged lines. We are optimistic that very soon this will be fully restored.
“We also explored the alternative line of providing power to the north through the Ikot Ekpene substation supplied from the Calabar plant, but the line got burnt along the way, and we are also trying to fix that.
“If you remember, at the last FEC meeting, one of the approvals for the Ministry of Power was actually the upgrade of the Shiroro-Kaduna transmission line, which is the major line that supplies electricity to the northern part of the country.
“We already have approval for this. It is one of the oldest transmission lines that we have in Nigeria, and we believe that it requires an upgrade.
“Through the magnanimity of Mr. President and the Federal Executive Council, we got approval to fix the line on a permanent basis. Once this is done, I believe that power to the north will be more stable than we are experiencing right now.
“But before I end this, let me also state that the world is moving; this is the 21st century, and we believe that the most effective way of supplying uninterrupted, functional, stable, and reliable electricity to the northern part of Nigeria is through our distributed power model, whereby each of the northern states will have an embedded utility, solar scale, solar source.
“All the 20 states will be insulated and immune from each other. We have actually made progress in this as we have interested contractors and financiers that are ready to install 100 megawatts each for each of the 20 northern states, which is scalable to 50 megawatts at first, then upgraded to 100 megawatts.
“When we have this, the power supply to the north will be reliable because of the advantage of the sun that they have, where solar will be highly effective. The lowest number of hours that a state in the north enjoys in terms of sunshine is 10 hours.
“Once you have this, we believe that the pressure on the national grid from the northern part of Nigeria will be lower, and our people will be able to enjoy better supplies,” the Power Minister noted.
