Adelabu: Improved electricity supply reduced complaints about petrol price hike

Adebayo Adelabu, minister of power, says complaints about the hike in petrol price dropped due to improved electricity supply.

The minister spoke on Tuesday in Lagos during his keynote address at the ongoing 2024 edition of the Nigeria Energy Exhibition and Conference, themed “Breaking Barriers in the New Energy Era: Clean, Reliable and Sustainable”.

Adelabu said the improved electricity supply meant Nigerians no longer have to buy petrol as much as they used to for their generator.

“People don’t need to buy petrol again as much as they used to do for them to have power. That’s why the noise is even at this level. If they had to be going to the filling stations to buy N1,000 per litre of petrol to generate electricity, we would have even had louder noise from the public,” he said.

“So, what we intend to do is to make sure that all the generators are replaced in line with Lagos state policy of replacement of 1 million generators in one year. I saw that. We must replace all the generators.”

The minister lamented Nigeria’s abysmal performance in the area of power generation, noting that in the last 40 years, the nation had only contributed 2000 megawatts of electricity to the national grid.

“But we are over 200 million people, we are still celebrating achieving 5000MW milestone. Why this seems to be an achievement is because it took us almost 40 years to generate additional 2000MW from the 2000MW milestone we achieved in 1984. When we came to the office, we met 4000MW,” he said. 

“Now, we have taken it to average of 5000MW, with a peak of 5,527MW on the third of September. But we are not deterred. If the last best time was 50 years ago, I believe the next best time is today, and this must wake us up. So, it’s an issue I don’t like to remember.”

‘NESI REVENUE COULD INCREASE TO N2TRN IN 2024’

The minister said by the end of 2024, the Nigerian Electric Supply Industry (NESI) could increase its revenue to N2 trillion from the N1 trillion generated in 2023.

“In electricity tariff, we can easily make N5 trillion in this sector, and we have seen the jump now. From N1 trillion in 2023, I can assure you we will achieve nothing less than N2 trillion for the industry in 2024. And this can only continue to grow,” he said.

“If this sector can boast of between N3 trillion and N5 trillion on a yearly basis as industry revenue, we will maintain infrastructure, we will replace dilapidated transformers, broken lines, damaged towers. There will be a lot of money to be committed to investment in the sector because infrastructure is about investment.”

Adelabu added that the government had also taken decisive steps to resolve legacy debts to gas suppliers and had secured presidential approval to settle the obligations.

He said one of the major hindrances or factors militating against the power sector is the huge debt overhang, adding that about N1.3 trillion was being owed to power generating companies (GenCos) and $1.3 billion to gas suppliers.

The minister said the president approved the gradual defrayment of the debts, adding that the intervention had also helped in increasing generation from an average of 4000 megawatts (MW) to a peak of 5,527MW.

He said the intervention had helped to prevent disruptions in gas supply, ensuring stable electricity generation and providing the much-needed reliability to the grid.

Furthermore, Adelabu said the cornerstone of the government and his ministry’s efforts had been ensuring the financial sustainability of the sector.

In this regard, he said the ministry had successfully mobilised over $1 billion to de-risk projects and attract additional investments into the sector.

He said one such initiative is the launch of the renewable investment platform limitless energy (RIPLE) programme, with $500 million from the Nigerian Sovereign Investment Authority (NSIA).

“We have finalised the World Bank’s $750 million distributed access through renewable energy scheme (DARES) scheduled to commence next month which will deliver electricity to over 2.5 million people through solar home systems and standalone mini grid and grid-connected minigrid in underserved areas,” he said.

“We cannot achieve energy expansion with government spending alone. The entire budget for this year was less than N30 trillion. How much is N30 trillion? And we know that for us to achieve the El Dorado for the power sector, there must be a spending of about $10 billion on a yearly basis for the next 10 years.”

Adelabu said the capital must come through the private sector.