The Federal Government has approved the development of new eastern and western electricity grids as part of efforts to strengthen Nigeria’s ageing transmission infrastructure and reduce recurring system collapses.
Minister of Power, Joseph Tegbe, disclosed this at the HBSAN Energy Conference in Lagos, saying the government was moving towards the procurement stage for the projects, with Nigerians expected to begin seeing their benefits within two to three years.
Tegbe said President Bola Tinubu had approved the commencement of the process to expand the national transmission network through the proposed eastern and western grids.
“The President has approved that we commence the process of building out the grid: East and Western grid. We’re going through the procurement process, but it’s something you’ll see the benefits in two to three years,” he said.
According to the minister, the initiative forms part of a broader plan to address longstanding weaknesses in the national electricity system and improve the reliability of power supply.
He said the government had divided the country into three energy zones to enable it to prioritise investments and interventions according to electricity demand and the condition of existing infrastructure.
Tegbe said particular attention would be paid to the Lagos and Abuja corridors because of the volume of electricity demand concentrated in the two areas.
“We have clustered Nigeria into three energy zones. The first one is the one that demands 50 per cent. If you fix Lagos and you fix the Abuja corridors, you’ve solved more than half of the problem of Nigeria,” he said.
The minister, however, stressed that improving operational efficiency alone would not solve the problems confronting the electricity sector, making expansion and rehabilitation of the transmission grid necessary.
As part of the intervention, Tegbe disclosed that the Federal Government had commenced a nationwide technical audit of electricity infrastructure to identify the specific problems affecting transmission facilities and determine which areas should receive priority attention.
“We have started a technical audit across the entire country to say where do we have issues, and what issues specifically do we have,” he said.
According to him, the audit is intended to ensure that government resources are directed towards the actual causes of transmission failures instead of replacing equipment that may not be responsible for particular problems.
“I don’t want to fix transformer issues where I have conductor and relay problems. I don’t want to fix insulators where the challenges I actually have are towers. So, we will finish that technical audit in the next couple of weeks. When we finish it, we then target our prioritised areas,” Tegbe said.
The minister also linked some of the persistent challenges in the power sector to ageing transmission infrastructure, saying parts of the network had been in existence for several decades.
He disclosed that some towers and transmission lines still carried the logo of the defunct Electricity Corporation of Nigeria, which existed before the National Electric Power Authority.
“This government has inherited a problem of 50 years,” Tegbe said.
“Before I became the Minister of Power, honestly, I used to think that everybody in the power sector just didn’t know their left from right. But the reality is, some of the towers have gone down with some of the transmission lines there.
“When I went to the site, I saw some of them carrying the logo of ECN. Many people in this room might not know what ECN is. ECN predated NEPA. So, some of these things were built 50 years ago. That is the reality.”
The proposed grids and technical audit come amid continued concern over repeated national grid disturbances and the condition of Nigeria’s transmission network.
Tegbe said the government’s approach would be to first establish the precise condition of infrastructure nationwide before directing investments towards areas requiring the most urgent repairs, replacements and upgrades.
Post Title: “The President Has Approved New Eastern And Western Grids” — Tegbe Says Nigerians Will See Benefits In Two To Three Years By Naijaonpoint.