After 16yrs of PDP, Nigeria still in total darkness

After 16 years, the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) is leaving the central government unable to fix the power problem that has kept the economy prostrate, BusinessDay can now reveal.

This is despite the billions of dollars that have been pumped into Nigeria’s power sector and the many promises on power generation from the ministers of power in the last 16 years.

Former President Olusegun Obasanjo spent $16 billion on the sector and President Goodluck Jonathan rolled out a power sector road map that also gulped billions of dollars, still power outages persist.

Today, no part of the country can boast of 4 hours uninterrupted power supply. Worse still, some have not experienced electricity since this year.

BusinessDay interactions with industry operators on the sidelines of the ongoing Offshore Technology Conference (OTC) in Houston, Texas, United States of America confirmed that the epileptic power supply woes in Nigeria may linger for sometime due to security, gas and technical issues confronting the sector.

In fact, the situation is getting worse as the nation’s thermal and hydro power stations are struggling to generate up to half of their installed capacity as the current power generation fluctuates between 2,500 megawatts (MW) and 2,700MW, even though the country has capacity to generate over 5000 megawatts.

Industry operators, who spoke to BusinessDay in Houston, Texas, United States of America, said that water and gas challenges, in addition to instructions from Transmission Company of Nigeria (TCN) which most times ask the distribution companies to drop their supply loads (electricity supply) from the generating companies because of weak transmission system, had also compounded the problem.

They also said that lack of security occasioned by the just concluded general elections, gas pipeline vandalism and technical problems resulting in the inability of the power plants to evacuate gas combined to increase the power outage the country is experiencing currently.

According to them, in the last two months, the Warri-Escravos-Lagos pipeline had been down due to vandalism and the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) could not fix it because of the recently concluded elections in the country.

The operators said that NNPC contractors, who were supposed to fix the pipeline, could not get the services of the Joint Task Force (JTF) that could have provided security cover for them until about a few days ago, because they were deployed for the elections.

David Ige, group executive director, gas and power, NNPC, confirmed the damage to the Warri-Escravos pipeline which has resulted in the loss of 150 million standard cubic feet of gas per day in the last two months.

He said the Trans-Forcados pipeline was also attacked about three weeks ago and when attempts were made to repair and bring it on stream, it was discovered that there was a leakage which had just been fixed.

“At the moment, there is a gas loss of about 150 million standard cubic feet per day. This has been the situation in the last 8 weeks,” he said.

Ige, who represented the group managing director of NNPC, Joseph Dawha, at the conference, revealed that it took the corporation weeks to start the repairs on the damaged pipeline due to election because the JTF could not provide security cover for NNPC contractors to access the damaged pipeline. “So, with Trans-Forcados pipeline out, we are losing gas from Oben, Sapele and from Nigerian Petroleum Development Company (NPDC) which is a significant chunk.”

The NNPC boss also confirmed that the problems of gas supply in eastern axis of the Niger Delta had largely been issues related to evacuation, noting that even though gas was supplied to Okpai power plant, power evacuation challenge did not make it possible for gas to get to the plant and the plant was not able to operate at full capacity.

“Gas has been supplied to Ibom Power, but it has been operating at about 50 percent of her capacity. Alaoji is not able to evacuate power due to a combination of issues.

“On the western side of the Niger Delta where the power plants are ready, there is, however, shortage of about 400 million standard cubic feet per day. The expectation is that by the end of this year, this shortage would have been reduced significantly as some of the gas projects would have come on stream”, he added.

The NNPC boss assured that the Lagos-Escravos pipeline under construction would be completed within the next three months. “Lagos-Oben has been completed and commissioned, so also Emure to Itokin in Lagos. What is left now is the Benin to Emure and this is progressing very well. The expectation is that before August this year, ELPS pipeline would have been completed and capacity doubled to two billion standard cubic feet of gas per day (scfd), and this is going to be the biggest pipeline in Africa,” Ige said.

Mike Uzoigwe, managing director, Egbin Power Plc, said that there was no gas and consequently the gas stations could not supply gas to the power stations.

Asked if it was issue of vandalism, he said: “The primary information that I have is that there is no gas and because of this we cannot operate efficiently.”

The current level of generation by some of the power plants are: Kainji, 202 megawatts (mw); Jebba, 168mw; Shiroro, 0mw; Egbin, 325mw; Sapele, 0mw; Delta, 250mw; Afam1-5, 0mw; Geregu, 83mw; Omotosho, 110.4mw; and Olorunsogo (gas), 135mw.

The performance of those plants under the National Integrated Power Plants (NIPP) are as follows: Geregu, 94mw; Sapele, 112mw; Alaoji, 119mw; Olorunsogo, 162mw; Omotosho, 94mw; Odukpani, 162mw; Ihovbor, 113mw; Afam, VI 295mw; Ibom Power, 72.5mw; AES, nil; Trans-Amadi, nil, and Rivers, nil.

Uzoigwe said that currently Egbin Power Plc had been generating 300 megawatts instead of 1,300 megawatts. “With this type of situation, how can we pay salaries and meet our cost? The situation is just too bad,” Uzoigwe said, adding that the hydro power plants were also down because of lack of water.

In spite of the power sector privatisation which is meant to make the sector efficient, the generating and distribution companies are passing bucks, justifying their inefficiencies.

From Eko Electricity Distribution Company, Ikeja Electricity Distribution Company in Lagos to Ibadan Electricity Distribution Company, Benin Electricity Distribution Plc, Kano Electricity Distribution Company to Enugu Electricity Distribution Company Plc the story remains the same: persistent power outage.

OLUSOLA BELLO