The Federal Government is planning a new Eastern-Western electricity grid to tackle Nigeria’s recurring power grid collapses, with the first benefits expected within two to three years.
Minister of Power Joseph Tegbe disclosed this at the recent HBSAN energy conference in Lagos, saying President Bola Tinubu had approved the commencement of the process to develop the additional grid infrastructure.
Tegbe said the government was preparing to begin procurement for the projects as part of a wider effort to address longstanding weaknesses in electricity transmission.
He said the government had divided the country into three energy zones to help prioritise interventions, noting that improving supply along the Lagos and Abuja corridors could address more than half of the country’s power sector challenges.
“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.
“But you can’t do that alone based on operational efficiency; you also have to build out your grid.”
The minister said a nationwide technical audit was under way to identify faults in the electricity network and determine which facilities required urgent repairs or replacement.
He said the exercise would prevent the government from spending money on equipment that was not responsible for particular failures.
“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,” Tegbe said.
He added that the audit was expected to be completed within the next few weeks, after which the government would focus on the most critical areas.
The minister attributed some of the recurring transmission problems to the age of the infrastructure, saying parts of the network dated back several decades.
“This government has inherited a problem of 50 years,” he said, explaining that some transmission towers and lines were built when the Electricity Company of Nigeria (ECN) operated before the National Electric Power Authority (NEPA).
“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,” he said.
Tegbe said the new grid and the technical audit were part of efforts to strengthen electricity transmission and ensure that government interventions addressed the actual causes of persistent failures.
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