We’re empowering new investors – Osinbajo reveals FG’s plan for Electricity

On Thursday, Nigeria’s Vice-President, Yemi Osinbajo announced that there must be a change of strategy for Nigeria’s power generation to increase, TOPNAIJA.NG reports.

Osinbanjo spoke during the official inauguration of the Niger Delta Power Holding Company (NDPHC) new 2×60MVA, 132/33KV substation and associated 132KV transmission lines in Abeokuta, Ogun.

The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports the vice president inaugurated the 2×60MVA, 132/33KV relief substation for Abeokuta; line bay extension works at Otta, Papalantoro and old Abeokuta 132/33KV substation.

According to Osinbajo, this commissioning is an important part of government effort to improve supply and quality of power to homes and businesses in Nigeria.

“In past few years, resolving the power problem has been top priority of government of Nigeria. Today, we have about 13,427 megawatts installed capacity and available capacity of 8,342 megawatts.

“This was achieved through the effort of government and private sector partnership on rehabilitation of turbines in Shiroro Egbin, Delta, Sapele, among others,” he said.

He assured Nigerians that before the end of 2019, new generation was expected to be injected into the national grid to boost and increase power supply in the country. Osinbajo said the distribution capacity in the 11 Discos were significantly low, hovering at around 4,000 megawatts on average with a peak at about 5,400MW.

He added that despite all the availability of about 8,000MW of generation and 7,000MW of transmission capacity, the lack of Disco infrastructure to absorb and deliver grid power to end-users had largely restricted generation to an average of about 4,000MW, and sometimes even falling below 4,000MW.

“It is evident that despite all efforts that has been put into trying to expand the grid, the structure of the market today cannot deliver on government’s promises to provide power for domestic and industrial use.

“A substantial change of strategy is necessary. There is clearly need for a change of strategy. What we have done in the past has taken us to a point where there is clearly a change of strategy,” he said.

“Second is the opening up of the market to new investors in generation, transmission and distribution infrastructure, transacting directly with each other to serve willing customers including deploying off-grid power and using micro-grids, especially for deployment of solar power,” Osinbajo said.

According to him, the policies and regulations meant to empower customers to get the services they want at prices they agree to include the Independent Electricity Distribution Networks 2012; the Mini-Grid Regulation, 2016; and the Eligible Customer Regulation, issued on November 1, 2017.