Buhari’s govt has invested hugely in electricity to stem system Collapse – Minister

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By Onu Okorie

Minister of Power, Mr Abubakar Aliyu has declared that the administration President Muhammadu Buhari has invested huge sums of money to ensure that Nigeria has a stable, reliable grid transporting quality power.

Aliyu, made this known during the interactive session on “Frequent National Grid collapse”, with the Senate Committee on Power and critical stakeholders, on Monday in Abuja.

While lamenting the challenge of epileptic Power supply in the country Aliyu revealed that the national grid collapsed 45 times in five years.

The Minister also said that the country recorded three collapses between March and April. He, however, declared that the cases of system collapse have been on the decline, adding that the country has witnessed improvement in the grid stability over the years.

“For example in 2017, we had 15 total collapse incidents, in 2018, we had 12, in 2019, we had nine in 2020, we had four and in 2021, two. This year, we have had three collapses due to severe disturbances on the grid,’’ he said.

The minister said the system collapse usually occurred when there were imbalances between the connected generation, transmission and distribution network.

He, however, said the government was doing everything within its power to ensure that the country had a reliable grid.

Another challenge we are having are issues of right-of-way across various states. Just recently, I raised this issue with the governors during one of their meetings. I am pleased to inform you that we are making significant progress. I am pleased to inform you that we are making significant progress.

“Once we fully execute these projects across the states, coupled with the efforts we are making to increase operational capacity, we can assure you that we will have a strengthened and reliable grid,’’ he said.

Earlier, the Chairman, Senate Committee on Power, Senator Gabriel Suswam, had said he was concerned about the collapse of the grid which started in March and has been recurring.

“There are different explanations from the different parastatals and the ministry. Nobody actually knows what the problems are. Nigerians have been subjected to very high epileptic service of power. The tariff has not abated, rather, we hear rumours of tariff increase when people are not getting the energy they are paying for,’’ he said.