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By Adewale Sanyaolu
The country’s power crisis is set to take a worse turn over the next three days as the largest power generating plant in West Africa, Egbin Power has shut down for maintenance works.
The development has thrown major parts of the country currently struggling with a power generation capacity of less than 5,000MW.
A statement by the Transmission Company of Nigeria(TCN) said
‘’This is to notify the public that as at 11:13 hours of 18th December 2023, Egbin Power generating station was shut down to allow the Nigeria Gas Company (NGC) maintain linking gas pipeline supplying gas to Egbin Power station’’
The statement added that the station will be shut down for 3 days from yesterday.
It said the shut out means a reduction of 676MW of bulk power generated into the nation’s grid for 3 days and consequently the quantum of bulk power available to be delivered to distribution companies load centres nationwide for the period.
Meanwhile, the Federal Government said it spent N375.8 billion on electricity subsidy between January and September this year, as power consumers paid a total of N782.6billion for the power during the same period.
The latest power subsidy figures obtained in Abuja from the Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission, an agency of the Federal Government, showed that the government subsidised electricity in the first, second and third quarters of 2023.
It was also gathered that power distribution companies billed electricity users a total of N1.06tn nationwide during the nine-month period, but collected N782.6billion despite the blackouts in many parts of Nigeria. On subsidy payments, it was observed that in the first quarter of this year, the Federal Government subsidised power by N36bn, this increased to N135.2bn in the second quarter, and jumped to N204.6bn in the third quarter. Figures for the fourth quarter are not because we are still in the fourth quarter of 2023.
