98 Grid Collapses, Over ₦5 Trillion Spent: Here’s What You Should Know About Nigeria’s Power Sector in Eight Years
Two successive National Grid collapses within six hours on September 14, 2023, threw the nation into a nationwide blackout, impacting the lives and businesses of millions of Nigerians who rely on the grid for their electricity.
However, the nationwide power outage is not much to be compared to the unstable supply of electricity throughout the country – a situation Nigerians have had to contend with since the country gained independence in 1960. Although 85 million Nigerians are cut off from the national grid and have to generate their own electricity, those connected grapple with an unstable supply of electricity that has cost business owners $29 billion yearly.
When Neusroom spoke to Ugonna, a barber in Afara Ukwu, in Umuahia, the capital of Abia State, the lack of frequent electricity supply, particularly during the day, forced him to generate his own electricity, which has more than doubled the cost of running his barber shop since the fuel subsidy was removed in June 2023.
“Before the fuel increase, I could use three to four liters of fuel a day.”
With the price of petrol in Umuahia around 600, Ugonna now spends ₦2440 on fuel alone, an amount that is more than twice what he spent before the hike.
“If I tell you to pay 600 for your haircut when there’s no electricity, you might think it’s too costly, but we spend a lot on fuel,” he said.
Despite reforms and Acts aimed at reforming the power sector, the menace has outlasted several administrations, swallowing billions of investments with little or nothing to show for it.
While the grid collapsed 10 times in 2015, in 2016 alone, it collapsed a total of 28 times, according to the Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission (NERC). Between 2015 and 2023, a Neusroom search shows that the National Grid collapsed, either partially or totally, more than 98 times in eight years.
These collapses are occurring despite several reforms and investments in the power sector.
In January 2020, former Governor of Kaduna State, Nasir El-Rufai, said that the Federal Government spent ₦1.7 trillion in the power sector between 2017 and 2020.
“The federal government has supported the electricity sector with ₦1.7 trillion in the last three years, and this is not sustainable.”
He continued, “The entire sector is broken, the tariff is an issue, the way the privatization was done is an issue to many. So there are many issues. What we have agreed on is that there are fundamental problems in the electricity supply industry. And that you cannot privatize an industry and then, over three years since privatization, pump in ₦1.7 trillion of government funds into it; that is not privatization.”
Also, in 2019, ex-Vice President Yemi Osinbajo said that the Federal Government spent ₦5 trillion on the power sector despite privatization, from 2013 to 2019.
Eighteen years after the Electricity Power Sector Reform Act (EPSRA) was signed into law in 2005, and 10 years after the privatization of the sector in November 2013, President Bola Tinubu signed the Electricity Act on June 9, 2023. However, Nigerians still experience power outages. According to Statista, only one percent of Nigerians between 18 and 35 years old reported having, on average, 24 hours of electricity supply every day. The data shows that nearly 70 percent of Nigerians between 18-35 and 36-60 have less than 10 hours of electricity per day.
While high expectations trailed the Electricity Act, the recent Grid collapses might be a reminder that the challenges facing the power sector are not over.
