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• Blames insecurity, obsolete facilities
From Adesuwa Tsan, Abuja
The national grid will continue to collapse until insecurity in the North is addressed to make way for repairs on Ugwachi-Bauchi-Makurdi line.
Minister of Power, Adebayo Adelabu, who made the claim when he appeared before the Senate Committee on Power for the 2025 budget defence of his ministry, yesterday, also emphasised that the grid is old and requires a total overhaul to make it efficient.
When asked if other measures could be taken to avert further collapse of the grid, he declined such assurance but promised that the power ministry would swiftly restore it when any incident occured.
Adelabu said it was erroneous to say the grid collapsed 12 times in 2024, saying it experienced only eight, out of which five were full and three partial collapses.
He said: “We had plans to stabilise the grid and other transmission infrastructure. I am happy to also inform you that out of the eight collapses of the national grid that we experienced during 2024, five were full collapses, while three were actually partial collapses.
Out of the five full collapses that we experienced, three out of them were actually due to generation problems where we had issues with sudden reductions in generation compared to the power being taken up by the users which affected the frequency imbalance on the grid and the reason for this was not far fetched.
“Out of the five, three were from generation, while two were from vandalisation issues and I don’t want to emphasise this vandalisation issue because we are all aware of what happened.
“As I talk to you, we have not rectified the major line which is the Shiroro-Mando-Kaduna line which is why our grid is so, so fragile. Because it is only one line that is still supplying power to the north and it is being burdened unnecessarily and we know the implication of this on infrastructure technicalities.
“So, it is still the insecurity that has not enabled us to fix the Shiroro-Kaduna-Mando line which has been handed over to the security agencies. Till today, they have not even fixed Ugwachi-Bauchi-Makurdi line.”
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On 2024 budget achievements, he said the ministry “achieved about 50 to 55 percent to date and we believe that between now and June, we will achieve up to 80 percent. The cut off is June 2025.”
For the 2025 proposal, he said, “if you look at the total budget for the sector, which is the ministry and its agencies, it is about N2 trillion. Out of the N2 trillion, overhead and personnel which are salaries is about N10.5 billion. Out of this N2.086 trillion, you see that the whole recurrent is about 80 percent. So, I will go to the federal ministry and you will see that out of N1.189 trillion for the Federal ministry as the capital budget, N810 billion is for loan repayment.
“That is N585 billion and N225 billion for multilateral and bilateral tied loans to the power sector. That is PPSR and the multilateral and bilateral tied loan, distribution sector recovery. Plus that is the N150 billion that is meant to be transferred as our counterpart funding for the Siemens project. So N150 billion plus N810, that is N960 billion taken out of N1.189 billion, leaving N229 billion for the power ministry. So out of this N229billion, N29 billion is for ongoing projects in the power ministry. I will try to explain the N200 billion additional which are for new projects based on proposed activities for the power sector.
“The federal ministry’s intervention for completion of TCN priority projects. This is a Federal government intervention for TCN projects. If you remember the last time we were here, I said we have over a hundred TCN uncompleted projects, some at 35, 36 and 30 percent completion. No appropriation for TCN is a major problem that we want to register at this session.
“With all the noise, all the hues and cries about the instability of the grid, grid age, grid fragility, grid unreliability, there is not one naira appropriation for TCN. I think we need to walk the talk. We expect TCN to fund its programmes through its internally generated revenue which have been dwindling over the years based on the fact that we do not want to increase the tariff. If you pay TCN, it goes into the tariff setting so I believe this committee should help us look into this by appropriating funds for TCN.
“Be that as it may, we have decided from the ministry to do a little of our own part by completing between eight and 12 of the projects, which is why we appropriated this N25 billion. It was more than this but it was cut down. We wanted about N100 billion to do something about this year’s projects. That’s number one.
“Number two is that, this is also an attempt to strengthen grid stability. It is the distribution segment. Today, as representatives of the people, when you go to your constituency, the first thing they will tell you is our transformer is down, our transformers are not working, our poles are bad, our poles are falling and all that.
“Irrespective of the activities of the discos, let us also as responsible representatives of the people, let us buy as many transformers as possible and distribute to this Pele. Which is why we have budgeted N36 billion for the distribution segment for transformers and replacements across the six geopolitical zones.
“The issue of rural electrification. Like I said, of the 64 percent electrification penetration that we have, 90 percent is in the urban and semi-urban centres. Our rural dwellers are still suffering from energy poverty and we believe that it will be expensive to extend the grid for their benefit so let us focus on alternative energy which is renewable energy so distribution of solar energy steps, rural street lighting across the six geopolitical zones under the Renewed Hope Light up Rural Areas programme, we have about N30 billion budgeted.
“Emergency intervention for distribution infrastructure. Just like we are covering for TCN, a lot of times that TCN infrastructure is vandalised, the restoration work is emergency, if you don’t do it between 24 to 48 hours, it becomes a national issue. Which is why we are also setting aside N10 billion to also intervene in distribution activities of our power sector value chain. Then we have some mini-hydro, mini-grid and solar maintenance where we have N8 billion.
“Then again, in terms of advocacy, we believe that our people need to be educated, they need to be reorientated to know that power assets are national assets and we should all jointly own it. N200 million.”
