No billing of customers during national grid collapse – Adelabu

…Blames frequent collapses on old infrastructure

Amid growing concerns over power failures arising from the regular collapse of the national power grids, the federal government, on Monday, said electricity providers would not bill consumers during periods of grid collapse.

Adebayo Adelabu, minister of power, stated this while fielding questions from State House journalists, after meeting with President Bola Tinubu, at the Presidential Villa, Abuja.

Adelabu, who expressed concerns over the regular failures of the grid, blamed the problems on weak and outdated infrastructure in the power sector but assured that consumers would henceforth be immune to billing for those periods. The national grid has so far collapsed about eight times in 2024 alone, leading to a total blackout across the nation.

BusinessDay checks show that the grid collapsed on March 28, April 15, July 6, August 5, October 14 and 15, this year alone.

But Adelabu said he would be meeting with the Nigeria Electricity Regulatory Commission (NERC) and all the electricity distribution companies (DisCos).

“I’m going to have a meeting with the chairman of NERC, and all the DisCos, for those days during which they suffered blackout. There should not be billing of any sort on any customer; be it household, office consumer or industrial consumer, they will be immune for billing for those periods.”

“I briefed Mr. President, among various other things, including the issue of the disturbance in electric supply to the northern part of Nigeria, about 17 states.

“We discussed the root cause of this, which was basically due to vandalisation of the transmission lines of Shiro Kaduna line, which is the major line that supplies electricity to the north, and the Transmission Company of Nigeria (TCN) has already set out to fix this line.”

He disclosed that the president has also directed the office of the National Security Adviser (NSA), as well as other security agencies to provide security for the repair of the vandalised power facilities.

“What they have asked for, which has been provided for them now is security cover from the NSA through the chief of staff and chief of air staff to enable them restore the damaged line. And we are optimistic that very soon, this will be fully restored.

He said that the government was exploring an alternative line to provide light to the north through the Ikot Ekepene sub-station supply from the Calabar Plant.

“If you remember that at the last FEC meeting, one of the approvals for the ministry of power was the upgrade of the Siroro Kaduna transmission line, which is the major line that supplies electricity to the northern part of the country.

“We already have approval for this. It is one of the oldest transmission lines that we have in Nigeria, and we believe that it requires an upgrade. And through the magnanimity of Mr President and the federal executive council, we got approval to fix the line permanently. Once this is done, I believe that power to the north will be more stable than we’re experiencing right now.

He also said that the government was already implementing a power policy that will make each state operate independently in power supply, as part of plans to enhance efficiency in the sector.

“Let me also state that the world is moving this is the 21st century, and we believe that the most effective way of supplying uninterrupted, functional, stable and reliable electricity to the northern part of Nigeria is through our distributed power model, whereby each of the northern states will have an embedded utility, solar scale, solar source.

“All the states will be insulated and immune from each other. We have made progress in this as we have interested contractors and financiers that are ready to install 100 megawatts for each of the northern states, which is scalable to 50 megawatts at first, then upgraded to 100 megawatts.

“When we have this, the power supply to the north will be reliable because of the advantage of the sun that they have, where solar will be highly effective. The lowest number of hours that a state in the north enjoys in terms of sunshine is 10 hours. And once you have this, we believe that the pressure on the national grid from the northern part of Nigeria will be lower, and our people will enjoy better supply.

“The grid was disturbed one time, and we deliberately shut it down the second time because of the explosion of the transformer at the Jeba plant.

“Before this, the last disturbance of the grid was about four months ago, which meant that we have been managing the grid. Let me tell you, the truth of the matter is that we have old infrastructure.

“We have a national grid that is more than 50 years old. We have a national grid whose transmission lines are weak, the towers are falling and the sub-stations and the transformers are old. The transfer that exploded in Jeba was 47 years old. We’ve been trying to revamp this to change them, but they cannot all be changed overnight”, Adelabu said.