Nigeria gets 40,000MW power from generators, says FG

Nigeria gets about 40,000 megawatts of electricity from generators powered by Premium Motor Spirit, popularly called petrol, and those run by Automotive Gas Oil, also known as diesel, the Federal Government declared on Tuesday.

It disclosed this at the ministerial summit on Integrated National Electricity Policy and Strategic Implementation Plan while examining the key challenges to Nigeria’s electricity reliability through the prism of governance, adherence to rules/contracts and finance.

Nigeria’s power generation and supply from its national grid revolves between 3,500MW and 4,500MW for an estimated population of 200 million people.

In his address at the summit, the Minister of Power, Adebayo Adelabu, pointed out that one of the main objectives of the Nigerian electricity sector reform programme initiated over 23 years ago was to make electricity available to consumers across the country with efficiency and consistency.

This, however, had yet to be achieved, rather, according to the minister, Nigeria had continued to burn hundreds of billions of naira to generate electricity through diesel- and petrol-powered generators.

He stated that electricity consumption per capita in Nigeria was at 140kilowatt-hour in 2021, relatively low in comparison to neighbouring countries and almost three times lower than the average for Sub-Saharan Africa.

Adelabu said, “Nigeria is a case study in a deep electricity paradox. Nigeria has grown to become the host of probably the world’s largest fleet of diesel- and petrol-powered generation capacity that is utilised for baseload supply.

Various figures have been mentioned but it is safe to say that this fleet measures no less that 40,000MW of total capacity.

“At an average operating cost of no less than N250/kWh as opposed to an average economic tariff today of approximately N120/kWh (weighted between petrol and diesel generation), the daily cost of this extreme inefficiency in electricity supply in Nigeria, is measurable in tens of billions of naira daily.”