“National electricity grid will continue to collapse” – Minister of Power

• Nigeria’s Minister of Power, Adebayo Adelabu, has acknowledged that the country’s power infrastructure is in poor condition, causing potential national grid collapses for the citizens.

• Adelabu emphasized the necessity of regional or state-level power grids to tackle frequent grid failures in Lagos.

• The speaker emphasized the necessity of establishing multiple grids across various regions and states to ensure greater stability in the power supply system.

The Minister of Power, Adebayo Adelabu, has recognized that Nigerians will persistently encounter national grid failures due to the inadequate condition of the nation’s power infrastructure.

During a statement made on Wednesday in Lagos, Adelabu highlighted the necessity for the development of regional or state-level power grids to mitigate the recurrent grid disruptions.

He pointed out that collapses of the national grid are almost inevitable under the existing framework and emphasized that the creation of multiple grids across various regions and states would contribute to enhanced stability in power supply.

Regarding the Electricity Act enacted by President Bola Tinubu in 2023, the Minister remarked that the decentralization of the power sector would facilitate the initiative to establish grids in each region.

Adelabu said: “This Electricity Act has decentralised power. It has enabled all the subnational governments, the state government and the local government, to be able to participate in the generation, transmission, and distribution of electricity. We all rely on a single national grid today; if there is a disturbance of the national grid, it affects all 36 states. It shouldn’t be like that. This will enable us to start moving gradually towards having regional groups and possibly having state grids.

“And each of these grids will be removed and shielded from each other. So, if there’s a problem with a particular grid, only the state where it belongs will be affected, not the entire nation. So, this is one of the impacts this Electricity Act will have.”

The Minister further stated that without adequate investment in the power sector, a grid collapse would be unavoidable.

He noted that there had been no instances of grid collapse in the previous four months until the occurrence on Monday.

Adelabu said: “We keep talking about grid collapse. Grid collapse, grid collapse, whether it’s a total collapse, partial collapse, or slight trip-off. This is almost inevitable as it is today, given the state of our power infrastructure, the infrastructure is in deplorable conditions, so why won’t you have trip-offs? Why won’t you have collapses, either total or partial? It will continue to remain like this until we can overhaul the entire infrastructure. What we do now is to make sure that we manage it.

“In the last four months, we have not heard of any grid collapse, except two days ago when we had a partial collapse that didn’t even last two hours. So, what we work on now is how to improve our response time, to bring it up each time it collapses. There are transformers of 60 years old, and 50 years old, and you’re expecting them to perform at the optimal rate. It is not possible. That is why we need a lot of investments in this infrastructure to bring them up to speed, to bring them up to the state that can give us a grid that will not collapse again.”