“The problems with the power industry is not physical, the power sector is filled with witches and wizards”
Not even going to lie, I have uttered this statement more than once in my short lifetime, at that time I also believed that the problems facing Nigeria’s power sector would never be solved, at least not in my lifetime. It’s mind boggling that a country that is said to have spent $16B on power infrastructure cannot boast of generating and transmitting 5000MW of electricity. When stats like these are flaunted on Newspapers and Breakfast shows, you start to wonder why it seems like there is no end to the tunnel that is the Electricity problem.

In the beginning, we were told that the problem was NEPA (the Government agency that was solely in charge of generating, transmitting and distributing power with its hydra-like problems). The ‘experts’ on television, Newspapers, our parents, our teachers even our politicians all said that NEPA had to be privatised for Nigeria to solve her Power problems. Privatisation the beautiful cure for all Nigerian Problems was pushed by President Olusegun Obasanjo (this process started since 2005) and our prayers were finally answered in 2013. Finally, Nigerians would have light, those were good times, everyone was hopeful. Three and the half years down the line and its pretty obvious that privatisation did not solve the problem, instead it seems post-privatisation Electricity sector is worse than NEPA.

I knew there were huge problems but I hardly understood the specifics and how it affected the value chain, in fact, i didn’t even know the full value chain of the power sector. Most of my discussions were based on the vague and ambiguous information that I lifted from newspapers and blogs. At a point, it seemed like I had too much disjointed information, information that didn’t really help advance my wholistic comprehension. For instance, what’s Forcados? I thought the power sector was privatised, why is TCN still a Federal Government agency? whats NIPP, why are their Power plants different from others? what’s the difference between TCN and DISCO’s? Why is gas so important for power in Nigeria?



Read more https://rezponder.com/nigeria-power-sector-problem-spiritual/