Power Grid Collapse Inevitable – FG
Adebayo Adelabu, the Minister of Power, has acknowledged that power grid collapses in Nigeria are almost inevitable due to the poor state of the country’s power infrastructure. Speaking at the unveiling of Hexing Livoltek, an electricity meter manufacturing company in Lekki, Lagos, on Wednesday, the minister highlighted the need for decentralized power grids across regions and states to mitigate frequent collapses.
Adelabu pointed to the Electricity Act signed by President Bola Tinubu in 2023, which decentralizes the power sector, allowing state and local governments to participate in the generation, transmission, and distribution of electricity. This shift could lead to regional grids or state-level grids, ensuring that grid failures are localized rather than nationwide.
“We all rely on a single national grid today; if there is a disturbance of the national grid, it affects all 36 states,” Adelabu explained. He added that by having multiple grids, a failure in one area would only impact that particular region or state, shielding the rest of the country from widespread outages.
Touching on investment challenges, the minister explained that the grid collapses are a direct result of the deplorable state of power infrastructure. He emphasized the need for significant investment to overhaul aging transformers and infrastructure that are up to 60 years old.
Despite recent failures, Adelabu noted that the government had managed to avoid grid collapses for the past four months, until a partial collapse occurred earlier this week. He stressed that while collapses are still happening, response times have improved, ensuring outages are resolved quickly.
The unveiling of Hexing Livoltek was seen as a positive step forward in Nigeria’s energy sector. Adelabu praised the company for investing in local content, job creation, and reducing the country’s reliance on imports, while Hexing Group’s CEO, Robert Liang, called the company’s expansion into Nigeria a commitment to clean energy and advancing smart energy systems.
By Wednesday evening, the national grid, which collapsed earlier in the week, had been fully restored.