Nigeria ‘can generate 10,000MW of power — but can’t transmit it’

Ngozi Ifeoma Malo, senior special adviser to former minister of power, Chinedu Nebo, says Nigeria can generate 10,000 megawatts of electricity, but transmission is the problem.

The Desmond Tutu fellow, who also served as special assistant on legal and policy issues to Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, former coordinating minister for the economy, said the transmission sector is the weakest link in the power value chain in Nigeria.

“I think the weakest link in the power value chain is in the transmission sector, not so much the distribution; I mean distribution has its own problems,” Malo told Osasu Igbinedion on The Osasu Show.

“Yes we do generate a lot of power, I think there has been figures I have seen that says we are at about 10,000 megawatts, we could generate at least 10,000 megawatts based on all our power turbines, especially if they are running at full capacity.

“The problem is wheeling them out to the distribution networks. And so that transmission link that connects the generation to the distribution is where the issue is.

“It is financing; our transmission infrastructure is aged, some of them have been there for about 20, 30 years, and it costs a lot of money to upgrade them.”

She said Nigeria will need public private partnership to fix the problems in the transmission in the country’s power sector value chain.

“We are not able to get the kind of financing that is needed. There are times about two or three years ago, you were hearing things about 300 billion to upgrade the country’s transmission infrastructure.”

The Harvard graduate said renewable energy sources will “help in terms of the unelectrified”.

She said “if the statistics are to be believed”, Nigeria has about 60 percent of its population cut off the national grid, and renewable power sources can easily fix the problem of rural electrification.