In a major initiative to address Nigeria’s fragile electricity infrastructure and eliminate persistent national grid collapses, the Federal Government has approved plans to build a new Eastern-Western electricity grid.
The Minister of Power, Joseph Tegbe, announced the executive approval during the Harvard Business School Association of Nigeria (HBSAN) Energy Conference held in Lagos. Tegbe disclosed that President Bola Ahmed Tinubu authorized the construction of the new transmission corridors to expand wheeling capacity and create structural redundancy in the national power network.
Addressing energy leaders and industry stakeholders at the summit, the minister explained that the federal government has divided the nation into three strategic energy zones to optimise power distribution.
“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. Because you can’t do that alone based on operational efficiency, you also have to build out your grid,” Tegbe stated.
He added that the government is currently advancing procurement for the project, projecting that tangible operational improvements will be felt within two to three years.
Highlighting the age of Nigeria’s current transmission assets, Tegbe revealed that field inspections uncovered infrastructure dating back over half a century.
“This government has inherited a problem of 50 years. When I went to the site, I saw some of them carrying the logo of ECN [Electricity Corporation of Nigeria]. ECN predated NEPA. So, some of these things were built 50 years ago. That is the reality,” he noted.
To ensure efficient deployment of capital, the Ministry of Power is conducting a comprehensive technical audit of the transmission network expected to conclude in the coming weeks.
“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. So, we will finish that technical audit in the next couple of weeks. When we finish it, we then target our prioritised areas,” Tegbe emphasized.
