Nigeria’s Electricity Supply Crisis
For decades the electricity supply and usage in some strategic African countries, especially the sub-Saharan regions, have been beyond poor. What’s more, the situation continues to deteriorate as the population increases.
Nigeria is among the 5 most populous countries in the sub-region and currently leads the board. Yet, barely 50% of her population has access to electricity. Those who do, experience power supply outages 60% of the time.
According to a report released by World Bank Indicators, by 2030, there will still be about 650 million people without access to electricity. Nine out of ten of them will live in Sub-Saharan Africa.
Additionally, in a report by one of the country’s most-read newspapers, PUNCH said that there has been no significant improvement in the electricity generated by the Transmission Company of Nigeria since 2015.
ANED (Association of Nigerian Electricity Distributors) is a body dedicated to Advocacy on issues of common interest and relevance for the Nigerian Electricity Supply Industry. Recently it released a briefing blaming the lack of improvement for the year 2020 on the impact of the COVID-19, and partially on the increasing number of electricity users.
Due to this ever-decreasing production of electrical energy, it is a norm and has become almost compulsory for every family and business owner to procure a power generating machine to substitute for lack of power.
The costs of owning a standard generating set ranges anywhere from $100 to thousands of dollars. That, of course, is excluding the cost of purchasing the fuel needed to power it regularly.
Providing more insight into this issue is the following taken from a report on npr.org:
“Jonathan Phillips, director of the Energy Access Project at Duke University… says Nigeria’s power problems date back decades to the country’s early days of independence, when the government set up a heavily subsidized electrical grid.
The energy system was often a prime target for corruption, he says, and has never been able to generate enough profit to offset the massive cost needed to build enough new power plants and distribution lines to keep up with the country’s rapidly growing population.
As a result, he says, Nigeria has one-fifth the total power supply of North Carolina, with a population of 200 million people, 20 times the state’s — and blows through up to $8 billion per year on diesel fuel for generators.”
While Nigeria is a land of opportunities, the issue of an unstable power supply continues to crumble start-ups. As a result, many never make it through their first 3 years of business.
While it is uncertain whether the root cause is from corruption, a misappropriation of funds, or rapid overpopulation, the fact still remains that it must be solved.
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