Former Minister of Power and Chairman of Geometric Energy, Prof Barth Nnaji, has said Nigeria requires a minimum of 100,000 megawatts of power supply to meet the country’s growing energy demands.
Nnaji noted that Nigeria’s energy generation and transmission infrastructure was grossly inadequate to enable the country to access the volume of electricity required to drive industrial growth, economic development, and meet the energy needs of its rapidly growing population.
The former minister spoke during an appearance on Arise TV Morning Show monitored by our correspondent on Friday.
“As we are now, the transmission infrastructure is simply not going to be able to carry the required power in the nation. We need at least 100,000MW of power here to be available, not just merely installed, to be able to serve this country.
“The growth of power in Nigeria is critical because the amount of power that we have installed is not anywhere comparable to what we should have for the nation,” he said.
Speaking on the state of electricity infrastructure and the new Federal Government’s National Integrated Electricity Policy, Nnaji said the success of the initiative hinged on aggressively expanding generation capacity, upgrading transmission infrastructure, and ensuring cost-reflective tariffs to sustain investment and reduce the financial burden on the government.
He called for pragmatic implementation of the policy, emphasising that while its framework remained promising, its success was tied to effective execution and strategic investments in power generation, transmission, and distribution.
Nnaji noted that while the policy was promising on paper, the real challenge lay in the implementation.
He warned that for Nigeria to enjoy stable electricity, it must adopt a pricing system that is both affordable and cost-reflective.
“If we want to have electricity, it must be paid for, there is no place where electricity comes free in the world. But it must be affordable, that is, it must be cost-reflective.
“The Federal Government cannot cope with having to get power from GenCos, and the DisCos are not able to cope with payment, so having about N4tn debt on the head of the Federal Government is not good, and it comes from these non-reflective tariffs,” he said.
On the proposed ban on the importation of solar panels to encourage local manufacturing, Nnaji expressed skepticism about the country’s readiness for such a move.
“The idea of producing goods for our consumption is good, but do we have the capacity to produce solar panels to support what we want in the nation? I’m not sure that we are there yet. A transition period is required.”
He argued that while local production should be encouraged, a sudden ban could backfire.
“I don’t think that immediate banning of importation of solar panels will get us there, but perhaps it might stimulate a lot of people to invest in the production of solar panels.”
Instead, Nnaji advocated a balanced energy mix that prioritises the use of Nigeria’s abundant natural gas resources, saying “We think that renewable energy is an immediate solution, it is not going to be an immediate solution for a while.
“We have abundance of natural gas, we need to capitalise on this availability by producing this gas to be able to use that to build power plants. At the same time, we should be encouraging the building of solar plants,” Nnaji said.
https://punchng.com/nigeria-requires-100000mw-for-growth-ex-power-minister
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