The Advisory Power Team (APT) at the office of the Vice President has said the nation’s power sector lost N69.1 billion between January 1 and February 19 this year due to the persistent challenges in the industry.
According to data gathered from the APT in the Office of the Vice President on Wednesday, the loss in the sector was due to insufficient gas supply to power generation plants as well as inadequate distribution and transmission infrastructure.
The data showed that a total of 2,332.95 megawatts of electricity was not produced due to the deficiency of gas on February 19th, 2019.
The data further showed that 32.5 megawatts of power were not produced as a result of the unavailability of transmission infrastructure, while 543 megawatts was not produced due to high frequency as a result of the scarcity of distribution infrastructure.
The APT said,
“The power sector lost an estimated N1.468 billion on February 19, 2019 due to insufficient gas supply, distribution infrastructure and transmission infrastructure. The estimated amount lost to insufficient gas supply, distribution, transmission and water reserves to date in 2019 is N69,064,000,000.”
It is puzzling, seeing last November, the Sahara Power Group partnered with South Sudan for power sector development, and yet the power sector still can’t generate enough electricity to be distributed across the country.
However, this shouldn’t be surprising as last year, the Association of Nigerian Electricity Distributors, ANED, said that Nigeria might not have stable power supply in the next five years except the challenges confronting the sector were addressed.
Power supply in Nigeria
A report from Spectator Index as of January 2018, ranked Nigeria as the second worst nation in power supply.
An international organisation, Power for All, also said that no fewer than 93 million Nigerians lacked access to electricity.
The epileptic power supply has been a major bane to businesses in Nigeria, starting from industrialisation and survival of small scale businesses.
So many companies, have either closed shop or relocated their production bases to other countries with a better and reliable power supply to maximise production cost and efficiency. This is, however, no thanks to the epileptic power supply that has characterised the nation.