• Explains Why Businesses Are Folding Up In Nigeria*
Worried by the epileptic distribution of power in the country, a federal lawmaker from Oyo State, Barr. Bosun Oladele has moved a motion on the need by the Federal Government to declare a state of emergency in the power sector and consider alternative options.
According to Oladele, who represents Irepo/Oorelope/Olorunsogo federal constituency in the House of Representatives, many Nigerians are facing untold hardship as businesses are folding up on daily basis.
The former commissioner noted that “the teeming populace groan under the weight of poor power supply, most Small and Medium Scale Enterprises die within the first two years of their establishment, while the big companies are folding daily due to the harsh economic environment of sustaining businesses in Nigeria and unemployment rate continues to increase exponentially gradually grinding the economy to a halt.”
Disclosing that the present population of Nigeria stands at 170 million, the Igbeti-born lawyer explained that “the basic electrical power need per person, according to the United Nations estimate is about 250W as a result of which the required power generation capacity to meet the power demand in Nigeria should be about 40,000MW.”
He continued: “the current installed generation capacity from the Generation Companies (GENCO) is only 5000 MW leaving a deficit of 35,000MW. About 10 more power generation plants are currently at different stages of completion and will be connected to the national grid after completion. It is intended to add another 5000MW, however, the national grid needs to be overhauled for these grandiose power plants to materialize. And it will require the colossal sum of a minimum of 10 billion US Dollars plus five to ten years completion time to achieve this, he submitted.
Oladele, who was a youth leader of the Oyo State chapter of the Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN) explained that “emerging global trend in most developed countries is the move towards distributive power supply where power is generated, distributed and used within local electricity networks thereby eliminating the need for expensive national grid system where power is generated far away from the locations where they are distributed and consumed.
“The Federal Government and indeed government at all levels owe the Nigerian populace a duty to embrace alternative solutions to the power crisis in Nigeria rather than feeding all generated power into the National grid where such is lost due to poor state of the grid and intractable maintenance challenges associated with it.
“The attainment of the United Nations estimate which amounts to 40,000MW power generation capacity is achievable during the life span of this administration if the government will adopt the distributive power approach without completely abandoning the national grid.
“The distributive power approach which is a success in other climes is one that allows for power to be distributed and sold in the locality where it is produced, the benefits are innumerable hence the need to explore both the legal and other frameworks to make this attainable in Nigeria,” he added.
The House, it was learnt, has referred the motion to its committee on power for further consideration and legislative action.
