The report last weekend that the national power grid lost 1,770 megawatts in two days, causing power generation to deteriorate below the 3,000mw benchmark should worry all Nigerians. The implication is that after decades of investment, reforms and efforts, pretty little seems to have been achieved. Last Friday, the total available electricity generation in Nigeria fell to 2,938.5MW. Two days earlier, it was 4,708.3MW.
At a stakeholders meeting in Abuja last December, Minister of Works, Power and Housing, Mr. Babatunde Fashola, advised electricity consumers in the country to direct their complaints about poor power supply to electricity distribution companies and generation companies .
To compound the challenge, according to Ogaji the rainy season would complicate things the more. “A lot of the networks are very weak. We will see a further drop in the generation as the rains start because the transmission and distribution networks are very bad,” he said. The question is, what are the authorities doing to avert that while addressing other challenges?