According to an operational report from the Office of the Vice President, Prof. Yemi Osinbajo, Nigeria’s power supply has remained on a steady decline over the last three months- July, August and September- with an average daily supply falling to 3,473 megawatts (MW) in September. The country has been battling with electricity generation and distribution since 1960, with every government in power both military and civilian pumping billions of naira to the sector without any form of result whatsoever.
For instance, it was learnt that between July and September, the average daily power generation and distribution was 3,557MW. Within the period, the Transmission Company of Nigeria (TCN), distribution companies under the aegis of the Association of Nigerian Electricity Distributors (ANED), and the generation companies were engaged in war of words over the state of the power sector.
Information from the Advisory Power Team (APT) in the Vice President’s office showed that in July, average daily supply to Nigerians was 3,676MW; this, however, dropped to 3526MW in August and further down to 3,473MW in September. According to the data, the average volume of constrained electricity – that is power that could not get to homes and offices due to various challenges such as low gas supply; unavailability of transmission and distribution infrastructure as well as water management challenges, was 4,013MW. It said in July, the volume of constrained power was 3,872MW.
This, however, rose to 4,020MW in August and further to 4,147MW in September, as a result of which N57.619 billion; N59.820 billion and N59.714 billion were respectively not earned by the sector within the three months period. By September 1, power on the grid dropped to 3,176MW and then up to 3,637MW on September 10, before falling to 3,595MW on September 20 and then ending the month on Monday at a paltry 3,380MW production level.
