The Senate on Tuesday urged the federal government to target the achievement of 100,000 megawatts of installed power capacity to match the size of Nigeria’s economy and improve its development status.
The Upper chamber is disturbed that the naton’s current 330kv and 132kv cannot supply enough electricity because of transmission constraints and due to lack of data acquisition system.
The Senate said the nation’s existing distribution infrastructure is decrepit with no modern distribution technology and management systems.
The lawmakers are projecting a 100,000 megawatts capacity to be achievable if the federal government makes use of the country’s natural endowments to fuel it’s power needs by mix of energy sources such as natural gas, hydro, coal, wind and solar energy.
Specifically, the Senate said it is aware that Nigeria ranks amongst the lowest in electricity availability per capita in the world.
To find solutions to the power deficit faced by the country, the Senate has advised the federal government to liaise with other nations for illumination.
This followed a motion by Senator Chukwuka Utazi (Enugu North) on the need to address Nigeria’s power problems.
According to Utazi, Indonesia with a population of 267 million people has an installed power capacity of 60,000 megawatts and a generating capacity of 42,465 megawatts.
Also, he said Brazil, with a population of 211l million people has an installed capacity of 167,000 megawatts and a generating capacity of 101,363 megawatts while Philippines, with a population of 107 million people, has an installed capacity of 20,055 megawatts and a generating capacity of 16, 271 megawatts.
“Mexico with a human population of 131 million people has an installed capacity of 75,680 megawatts and a generating capacity of 53,653 megawatts. Egypt with a population of 99 million people has an installed capacity of 42,000 megawatts and a generating capacity of 31,24l megawatts.
“Turkey has a population of 81,916 million people, an installed capacity of 88,178 megawatts and a generating capacity of 57,292. South Africa has a population of 57 million people, an installed capacity of 51,309 megawatts and a generating capacity of 34,978 megawatts.
“Morocco has a population of 36 million people, an installed capacity of 9,754 megawatts and a generating capacity of 6,393 megawatts, while the USA with a population of 330 million has an installed capacity of 1,100,000 megawatts and a generating capacity of 717,710 megawatts. In comparison, Nigeria has a population of 200 million people with an installed capacity of 12,500 megawatts and a generating capacity of 4000 megawatts,” he informed.
Suggesting further, Utazi said various zones of the country are naturally positioned to take advantage of energy mix and renewables.
He said the Northern part of the country with vast expanse of land can tap into large solar farms while the Southern parts of the country with significant reserves of natural gas and coal can generate power from same, and added that both the North and South have large water bodies that can still be dammed for hydro.
Utazi recalled that at the time of the power sector privatization in 2013, the objective in privatizing the power distribution assets of Nigeria was not to achieve highest financial bids, rather its goal was to get capable companies that can achieve the lowest Average Technical Commercial and Collection losses (ATC&C) within five years, to invest in and take over management of the distribution companies.
He further stated that during the bidding for the distribution assets, bidders needed to have two capacities – financial Capacity to invest in modernizing and reinforcing the infrastructure, and technical capacity to partner with reputable international power distribution companies.
But he said unfortunately, neither of the capacities were used by Government when it selected final bidders and handed Over the distribution assets.
The lawmaker noted that rather than bring in adequate funds through their partners, the buyers of the distribution assets simply borrowed money from the Nigerian Commercial banks and provided same to the BPE as their equity for the purchase of the assets, hence their inability to make the much needed investment to reduce the Average Technical Commercial and Collection (ATC&C).
Consequently, the Senate has resolved to constitute an ad-hoc committee to investigate the problems of power generation, transmission and distribution in Nigeria.
Also, the Upper Chamber has urged the federal government to devise power generation models that are embedded at
economic and industrial clusters, hinging around regional grids that are semi-autonomous.
It further advised the federal government to breakup Nigeria’s power distribution companies into smaller units to be more manageable for optimal performance.
Solomon Ayado, Abuja
