The Federal Government has approved plans to develop new eastern and western electricity grids as part of efforts to address Nigeria’s persistent power grid collapses and strengthen the country’s transmission infrastructure.
The Minister of Power, Joseph Tegbe, disclosed this at a recent HBSAN energy conference in Lagos, where he outlined the government’s plans to tackle longstanding challenges in the electricity sector.
Tegbe said the government was preparing to commence the procurement process for the projects, adding that Nigerians could begin to see the benefits within two to three years.
He also revealed that a nationwide technical audit of electricity infrastructure was underway to identify existing faults, assess the condition of transmission facilities and determine which areas require urgent intervention.
According to the minister, the government has divided the country into three energy zones to help prioritise investments and direct resources to areas with the greatest impact on electricity supply.
“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 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,” Tegbe said.
The minister explained that the technical audit would help the government identify the precise causes of failures across the network and ensure that repair funds were directed towards the equipment and facilities that needed attention.
He stressed that interventions must be based on accurate technical assessments rather than assumptions about the source of infrastructure problems.
“We have started a technical audit across the entire country to say where do 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.
Tegbe attributed some of the persistent challenges in the transmission network to ageing infrastructure, noting that several facilities had been in service for decades and required substantial rehabilitation or replacement.
He said some transmission towers and lines dated back to the period when the Electricity Corporation of Nigeria (ECN) operated, before the establishment of the National Electric Power Authority (NEPA).
“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.
“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,” he stated.
The proposed grid expansion, alongside the ongoing technical audit, is expected to guide the government’s efforts to modernise the transmission network, improve electricity delivery and reduce the frequency of nationwide grid disturbances.
The government’s stated two-to-three-year timeline for delivering benefits will be a key measure of progress as procurement and infrastructure planning move forward.
