Ekiti State Governor, Kayode Fayemi has stated that to solve Nigeria’s electricity problem, we must do away with its National grid and look at alternatives focusing on zonal and regional grids.
Fayemi stated this while responding to questions during his public declaration to run for president.
Fayemi who is the chairman of the Nigerian Governor’s Forum also stated that government must create an enabling environment for businesses to thrive and create jobs.
What Fayemi is saying
Fayemi stated that it has become imperative to do away with the national grid and break down the grids into subdivisions, and also redirect the focus to renewable energy.
- He said, “It is time to do away with a National grid. We now need to begin to look seriously in the direction of zonal or regional grids, or even micro and mini grids, outside of the mainstream and official and national energy grid.
- “It is the only way to solve this problem, and focus our energy on renewable energy as well.
- “If we don’t do that, this national grid is completely broken and fixing it every day it crashes, is a problem we cannot easily tackle.”
On the issue of unemployment, he said that it is not the job of the government to start focusing on employment but to ensure an enabling environment for businesses to thrive.
- “It is our (government) job to provide the enabling environment for private sector to thrive, for agriculture sector to thive, for infrastructure sector to create jobs as there are so many jobs tied to this critical sectors of our economy. That is what we need to do.
- “In addition to addressing questions of skills, because we talk about employment and majority of our young people do not have the requisite skills to the job that is necessary, we need innovation, creativity, technology and we need skills.”
In case you missed it
In a first step towards regionalizing Nigeria’s electricity production and distribution, Nairametrics reported in March that Nigeria’s House of Reps passed a bill to allow states to generate, transmit and distribute electricity in areas covered by the national grid, and for related matters. The bill to enable states to generate transmit and distribute electricity was voted for 298 to 2.
Yes Sir, mini grid models are good in the sense that interchange of excess power between sub grids helps to maintain reliability. However if we look at Nigeria as we are now, what is the distribution of generating stations? Clusters in the south south, south west and north central. Beyond that, other areas are dependent entirely on the aforementioned. In a dream mini grid, we should have a fairly equal distribution of small sized generating plants spread around the entire areas of coverage. This is not so now and the earlier attempted split of the grid into two portions didn’t work of the instability created by not having a balanced system. A lot well designed and balanced power system will do us a lot of good. The experience of the distribution companies should advice is on the risk of handing over split grid into the hands of unqualified merchants who are careless about service but very interested in reaping where they have not sowed.