By
March Oyinki
The Access to electricity Index, collects its data from industry, national surveys and international sources such as IEA, IRENA, UNSD, World Bank and WHO. It describes access to electricity is the percentage of the population with access to electricity. Nigeria has spent a better part of the last 60 years grappling with the perennial challenges of power generation.
Every successive administration during this period have invested billions of hard earned tax payers dollars in the power sector without any recognizable progress, with the power generation capacity stagnating between the threshold of 4,000 megawatts (MW) to 5,000 MW in the last sixty years and above.
The International Trade Administration, in its 2023 Power Systems and Renewable Energy report, shows that Nigeria spends over $12 billion per year on electricity, which amounts to over $720 billion till date.
Despite this humongous investments in the power sector alone, the country’s consistently low performance in the power sector demonstrates that efforts by the government have largely been ineffective and unproductive, thereby requiring an urgent reconsideration and remodeling of its energy policies and strategies.
Existing studies of the energy supply patterns of the leading developing economies in Africa such as South Africa, Egypt, Algeria and Morocco, shows that an average of 1 gigawatts of energy powers around 650 households of a family of 4, which means about 2,600 people for every 1 gigawatts per million population. South Africa is the continent’s powerhouse, generating 244,383 gigawatt-hours (GWh) of electricity annually. Egypt follows closely in second place with about 209,677 GWh of electricity each year.
Nigeria occupies a distant fifth position generating 36,037 GWh of electricity annually, placing the country at 67th in the global rankings. At 36,037 gigawatt-hours, Nigeria’s power generation capacity can only power 55,424,906 households of about 93,696,200 people of the total population of 216,783,381 according to the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) figures for 2022.
This electricity generation figure represents less than half of the population of the country, which is an indication that Nigeria’s power generation capacity is still a far cry from its actual energy sufficiency.
Research on Global Electricity Development Index 2024 analysis of Global Electricity Development Supply guarantee special index is 75.2, with North America scoring the highest with 92.9 and Africa scoring the lowest of 54.1.
The 2020 World Bank Doing Business report, ranks Nigeria 171 out of 190 countries in the global electricity ranking. Getting electricity and electricity access is seen as one of the major constraints for the private sector.
The report also revealed that 85 million Nigerians do not have access to electricity. This represents 43% percent of the country’s population, making Nigeria the country with the largest energy access deficit in the world.
United Nation Department of Economic and Social Affairs Population Division on Patterns and trends in household size and composition, in its report gives the mean average household size across the 153 countries or areas is 4.0 persons per household and an average of 3.8 persons per household.
Statista in its report published by Saifaddin Galal, Mar 22, 2024, also showed that Sierra Leone had one of the largest household sizes in Africa, with an average of 10 members.
Senegal and the Gambia follow with approximately 9.97 and 8.56 members, respectively. Sub-Saharan Africa remains the world’s region with the largest households (6.9 individuals), exceeding significantly the world average.
Electricity supply deficiency has been a major hindrance to Nigeria’s economic growth since independence. The federal government has made several efforts aimed at increasing electricity generation and distribution to consumers across the country.
In 2006, the government initiated the Renewable Energy Master Plan (REMP) aimed at diversifying electricity generation in an attempt to improving power supply from 13% of total installed electricity generation capacity in 2015 to 23% by 2025 and 36% by 2030.
The initiative is to introduce renewable energy sources, such as wind, solar, biomass, and small hydro energy systems as alternative energy sources to consumers, especially in rural communities around the country.
In continuation of efforts by the government to diversify the power sector, the government also introduced the Gencos and Discos, the Nigerian Bulk Electricity Trader initiative, as a means to enhance the traditional electricity supply models through the Transmission Company of Nigeria (TCN).
Since the federal government sold its distribution and generation assets to core investors in November 2013, as part of the unbundling of the Power Holding Company of Nigeria (PHCN), the actual electricity generation capacity has not achieve any significant improvement. In 2013 the generating capacity was 4,214.32MW, and in 2024, 11 years after, it increased to 4,249.10 MW, a rise of 13 MW.
This suspicion is evidential and apparently, a deliberate stagnation plan, which is not peculiar to the power sector alone, as it cuts across the entire energy sector.
The Petroleum sector, Iron and Steel sector and even the Mining sector too have all suffered from this utter inexcusable neglect by successive administrations spanning several decades, thereby raising concerns that it is a predetermined ploy to ensure that the country’s energy sector remains moribund to keep it underdeveloped and to serve the economic interest of some global power brokers who are working against Nigeria’s emergence as a dominant economy in the African continent.
Nigeria’s energy sector has witnessed some of the most devastating, complicated and inexplicable experiences since the country gained independence, which justifiably, raises some doubts about the genuineness of the country’s inability to refine its own oil that is explored in large quantities.
The citizens are asking some pertinent questions and are seeking answers urgently from the federal government.
Why have the country relied entirely on importation for decades of a product that is available in abundance locally?
The citizens owe the country the obligation to hold the government accountable for this gross mismanagement and colossus loss of our oil resources, and equally, to ensure that the government is called to order and stop this unending circle of non-performance in the energy sector in particular, and all the other sectors in general.
It is the responsibility of all the civil society groups and advocacy activists to exert pressure on the government to demand for accountability in the energy sector, and for the government to maintain or establish strict compliance of existing transparency procedures and regulations.
OYINKI IS GROUP DIRECTOR OF ADVOCACY FOR CHANGE, A DEVELOPMENT ADVOCACY NGO
