The Nigerian Association for Energy Economics (NAEE), Nigeria’s current electricity generation and distribution capacity of 4,000MW is one of the lowest in the world and is insufficient to power even Lagos alone.
The association’s president, Prof. Yinka Omorogbe, highlighted that Nigeria still treats power as an elite commodity.
The 16th NAEE/IAEE Annual International Conference, with the theme “Energy Evolution, Transition and Reform: Prospects for African Economies,” will be held from 9-11 July in Abuja.
The conference will be chaired by Mr. Gbenga Komolafe, CEO of the Nigerian Upstream Petroleum Regulatory Commission (NUPRC), and opened by Prof. Jean-Michael Glachant, President of the International Association for Energy Economics (IAEE).
Prominent speakers include Dr. Omar Ibrahim, Secretary General of the African Petroleum Producers Organization (APPO), and Dr. Bello Gusau, Executive Secretary of the Petroleum Technology Development Fund (PTDF). Omorogbe emphasized that the current power situation in Nigeria is worse than in the past.
The electricity sector in Nigeria is nothing to write home about and it’s one of the worst in the world. The truth of the matter is that we have generally not done things in a holistic fashion.
“If you are talking about electricity within any country, you have to be talking about electricity for everybody and every type of industry. We don’t. When we’re talking about electricity, we are almost treating it like an elite product and thinking of electricity as what we give to the urban people.
“Everybody has to have it. It’s not like right now in Nigeria where what everybody has a generator. That should not be so. In other countries, for instance in England, they will apologise to you. If for any reason the light goes off for a time, they will bring you a generator and that generator will be utilised in your area,” she stressed.
She argued that Nigeria must improve its grid system, work on establishing mini-grids and other stand-alone isolated renewable solutions to avoid the frequency of erratic power supply in the country.
“Blackouts are supposed to be timed. But where you’re talking about an abysmally small amount of electricity, it’s difficult. I mean, you’re talking about 4,000 megawatts, which is not enough for Lagos, let alone talking about the whole Nigeria.
“If you’re talking about a country that says it will increase electricity and they say we will have 20,000 mw in a few years time, that’s ridiculous. We’re talking about a country that needs multiples more than that.
“We’re talking about a country that needs electricity to power its industries. There is no industry that is functioning in Nigeria without its own generators.
“So in the first place, we’ve never even got it right about how much electricity we need. And then we’ve never even planned to be able to have enough electricity for everybody. Arguably, we can actually say it’s probably worse now than it was before,” she maintained.
