The Federal Government has approved plans to develop new eastern and western electricity grids to address Nigeria’s recurring national grid collapses, with the first benefits expected within two to three years.
The Minister of Power, Joseph Tegbe, disclosed this at a recent energy conference organised by the Harvard Business School Association of Nigeria (HBSAN) in Lagos, saying the government was preparing to begin the procurement process for the projects.
He said President Bola Tinubu had approved the commencement of the process, while a nationwide technical audit was underway to identify weaknesses in the country’s electricity transmission infrastructure and determine areas requiring urgent attention.
“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,” the Minister said.
“The President has approved that we commence the process of building out the grid: East and Western grid. We’re going through the procurement process, but it’s something you’ll see the benefits in two to three years.”
The proposed projects form part of the government’s efforts to strengthen transmission infrastructure and improve electricity supply amid persistent power disruptions across the country.
Tegbe said the government had begun a technical audit of electricity infrastructure nationwide to establish the condition of existing facilities, identify specific faults and ensure that investments were directed towards the areas most in need of repairs.
He explained that the exercise would prevent the government from spending money on equipment that was not responsible for particular faults.
“We have started a technical audit across the entire country to see where we have issues, and what issues specifically do we have. 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,” he said.
The Minister said the audit would be completed within weeks, after which the government would identify priority areas for intervention.
Tegbe attributed some of the transmission network’s problems to ageing infrastructure, noting that certain electricity facilities had been in operation for decades.
He said some transmission towers and lines dated back to the era of the Electricity Corporation of Nigeria (ECN), which preceded the National Electric Power Authority (NEPA).
The Minister said his assessment of the infrastructure had changed his perception of the challenges facing the power sector.
“This government has inherited a problem of 50 years. Before I became the Minister of Power, honestly, I used to think that everybody in the power sector just didn’t know their left from right. But the reality is, some of the towers have gone down with some of the transmission lines there,” he stated.
“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.”
Nigeria’s electricity transmission network has suffered repeated disruptions, with infrastructure failures contributing to outages affecting homes, businesses and public institutions.
In September, the Transmission Company of Nigeria reported the collapse of a tower along the 330-kilovolt Kainji–Birnin Kebbi transmission line following heavy winds and rainstorms. The incident disrupted bulk electricity transmission along the corridor, prompting the company to begin arrangements to rehabilitate the damaged infrastructure.
The Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission has also previously raised concerns about recurring grid disturbances, including incidents involving equipment failures and the shutdown of power plants following disruptions to the network.
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