We’ll roll out 1m free prepaid meters –Nebo

The current state of electricity supply in the country can be
described as abysmally poor, where households cannot boast
of having uninterrupted power supply for 24 hours. Despite
moving from a paltry 2,800 megawatts in 2007 to about 4,500
megawatts in 2015, Nigerians are yet to feel the impact of the
growth in power generation.
But in all of this, government said it is working hard to ensure
that power is delivered to Nigerian homes through alternatives
platforms.
Fielding questions from senior editors of The Sun Publishing
Limited, led by its Managing Director and Editor in Chief, Mr.
Femi Adesina, last week, Minister of Power, Prof. Chinedu
Nebo, explained that the era of estimated billing would soon
be a thing of the past as government had concluded plans to
roll out one million free prepaid meters for electricity
consumers across the country.
The Minister, while soliciting the support of the media in the
coverage of Ministry’s activities, commended The Sun for
taking the lead in online news reportage and putting itself
ahead of its peers.
However, the Minister lamented that despite government’s
efforts to realise stable power supply, the activities of vandals
have continued to frustrate these initiatives. He therefore
called on The Sun to help project the ills of pipeline vandalism
which, he said has consistently led to shortage of gas for
power generation.
He also spoke of his Ministry’s effort to complete the NIPP
projects and its efforts to improve transmission infrastructure
across the country. Excerpts.
Current state of power sector
When the current administration came on board, the power
facilities were delivering barely 2,800MW. In fact, the actual
daily average did not reach 2,500MW. But today, we have hit
4500MW and I think it is a milestone by any standard.
Electricity is not something you just can do overnight. It takes
time for any of the projects to really mature.
On a daily average, because of all kinds of downtime, load-
shedding, among others, we have exceeded 3,500MW, which is
well in excess of 1,000MW over what Mr. President inherited.
But we have been picking up, at least for now. Apart from
vandalism, we have picked up to 4,500MW and we have the
capacity to do more than that.
NIPP projects
The National Integrated Power Project (NIPP), which President
Goodluck Jonathan inherited, was virtually moribund. It was
when he became the Vice President that he started wooing
and encouraging the states to come on board to ensure that
the NIPP didn’t quite die completely. When completed, all of
the 10 plants under NIPP will supply to the grid approximately
4,500MW. Two of the plants (Geregu and Omotosho) have
already been commissioned while others are on board and will
be inaugurated within this year, by the grace of God.
Also, when the NIPP was conceived, there was no concomitant
development and deployment of gas infrastructure to supply
gas to the plants to power the turbines. They are all gas-fired
turbines. But working with this administration’s Gas Master
Plan, we can comfortably say that essentially all the NIPP
plants now have gas infrastructure. In other words, once gas
is available, we can power all of them. But that was not the
case a few years ago. In the past, there was no mention of
connecting those plants to gas.
Efforts to improve transmission infrastructure
In this first tranche, we are training 200 technicians, including
line climbers, sub-station operators and other experts in the
field from generation, transmission to distribution. We will be
absorbing 200 from each state, including the Federal Capital
Territory (FCT), which means we will be having about 7,400
across the country. The Federal Government is to sponsor 100
from each state while the respective state governments are
expected to sponsor an additional 100 from their states.
So the kind of workforce we are trying to create can be said
to be geographically correct because all parts of Nigeria will
be part of it.
Next is the infrastructure for transmission that Mr. President
inherited. Apart from being an obsolete workforce, they are
also ageing, ailing and dying professionals. He is revamping
that now. But for the physical infrastructure, you go through
Nigeria and take a look at the transformers we have around.
They are overloaded. And overloaded transformers will always
trip off and there are no two ways about it. They will not
serve the intended purpose. At the moment, we are gradually
and systematically replacing a lot of them.
In fact, the Vice President called me last week requesting for
more transformers that have been abandoned at the port for
many years now. So, we are doing everything possible to
ensure that this is taken care of. Virtually every commercial
city you go to, there are overloaded transformers. Thousands
have been replaced but thousands won’t do the job. We are
talking about hundreds of thousands eventually to make sure
everyone is covered.
Again, government has also provided a lot of leverage for
transmission infrastructure. Ideally, transmission capacity
should be 150 per cent of generation capacity in any country.
But in Nigeria, it is the reverse. We have more generation
capacity than transmission but government is trying to reverse
that and put it in the proper way so that we will have enough
capacity to wheel out all the energy coming from the
generation plants.
Impact of privatisation
I am sure that Nigerians will all agree with me that the
privatisation exercise is one thing that the whole world has
been amazed at because everybody thought it was impos­
sible. They said we were embarking on a white elephant
project that will never be realised. But when it eventually
happened, one of our international development agencies
described it as “simultaneous sequentially” and that they
haven’t seen that level of utility privatisation anywhere in the
world in recent history and that countries that had tried to
privatise always failed. But in the case of Nigeria, we are
trying to sustain that tempo. And that took the dexterity of
purpose of Mr. President alongside his courage and boldness
to make sure that the exercise was carried to a logical end.
Many people don’t realise that already we are beginning to
see some results of the privatisation exercise. For instance,
the Azura Power Plant in Edo State that was flagged off two
months ago would never have happened without privatisation.
Many of these other Independent Power Projects (IPPs) would
never have happened without privatisation.
The Qua ExxonMobil 500 megawatts power plant in Akwa
Ibom State that is coming on board would not have happened
without privatisation. And so many of its kind scattered
across the country would not have been possible without
privatisation.
Even solar power licences have been issued by the regulator,
Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission (NERC), to ensure
that we have diversity of sources of energy in Nigeria.
Again, Ughelli Power Plant in Delta State, at handover had less
than 200 megawatts but they have beefed this up by repairing
and revamping the turbines and now, they generate about 400
megawatts. They are also planning an additional 1,000
megawatts after all the revamping they have just done. That
would have been impossible under the old Power Holding
Company of Nigeria (PHCN) because there would not have
been enough money to improve on all the abandoned power
plants across the country.
Let’s also take Egbin in Ikorodu, Lagos, as another example.
Egbin is the largest power generating plant in West Africa.
Again, Mr. President in the next couple of days will
commission the revamped, reconstructed and overhauled 6th
turbine that was blown up nine years ago. For nine years,
government could not find the resources to fix it. But because
we now have a private operator, they have not only fixed it,
they tested it the whole of last week and it is now working.
That alone will add an additional 220 megawatts of electricity
to the national grid and they are even planning for more. So,
we can all see that privatisation as regards generation is
working very well. And that is why we are even thinking of the
possible privatisation of the transmission infrastructure in
phases.
For the distribution companies (Discos), they totally
underrated what the commercial losses would be because we
worked very hard to reduce technical losses substantially. So,
technical losses are not really a major problem with regards to
tariff recovery as compared to commercial losses.
Some Discos experience as much as 55 per cent commercial
losses because Nigerians enjoy stealing electricity by not
paying for it. Some people even brag that they are not paying
for power. People have been found to have dug holes under
the ground to connect electricit from their neighbours and they
are not paying. We have a lot of energy theft in Nigeria
because consumers are not metered. More than 50 per cent of
electricity consumers in Nigeria are not metered and that is
why government is working very hard to help the Discos
provide meters to Nigerians. Right now, government has
approved about one million meters that will go round the
country. And some people say it is not enough but when the
other governments didn’t do anything, nobody complained.
Zero is not enough; if zero is not enough, what is one million?
One million is more than what people ever envisaged was
possible. And government is going to ensure that it gets to
people free of charge. At the end of the day government is
striving to ensure that things are taken care of.
Impact of vandalism on set targets
In all of this success stories I have reeled out, one major
problem we have always had and still having is vandalism.
And that is one area we would appreciate the help of the
media, especially The Sun Publishing Limited. Many years ago,
The Sun Publishing Limited took up the task of showcasing
horrible roads, abandoned projects and infrastructure across
the country. And when the company started publishing this in
its newspaper and showing the public, it led many
governments to sit up. I think The Sun can do that again.
In this regard, we would appreciate The Sun taking up that
task again but now in the area of vandalism. We would want
your newspaper to champion that cause and tell members of
the public and those involved in this act of sabotage of
vandalism to our oil and gas pipelines are doing something
that affects all of us. I think this will go a long way in helping
us realise our vision to provide steady power supply to
Nigerians.
But to remedy the situation, government is putting a lot more
efforts in hydro power facilities. Remember that these big
good hydro plants we have – Kainji, Jebbba and Shiroro – are
all doing well. But it came to a time that both Kainji and
Jebba couldn’t deliver half of their capacity because the
turbines had not been overhauled for many years.
In more than 30 years of Kainji’s operation, it was never
overhauled. But it is this same government that attracted the
resources needed from World Bank and Japan, among others,
to maintain Kainji and Jebba. And very soon both plants will
be able to deliver at full capacity.
Shiroro is doing well except where we have water
management problems. But in addition to that, President
Goodluck Jonathan flagged off the Zungeru Hydro Power
Project on May 28, 2013. When completed, the plant will give
Nigeria about 700 megawatts of power. But remember also
that for over 30 years that had been on the drawing board and
it had been stories, dreams and visions. No government took
the bull by the horn until Jonathan flagged it off. A lot of civil
works are going on now at the site in Zungeru.
Also, the President will soon flag off Mambilla in Taraba State.
That project will give us 3,050 meggawatts of power when
completed. With all these efforts and projects, Nigerians
should know that government is not sleeping neither is it
resting on its oars.
We also have Kashimbilla in Taraba State, that will be commis­
sioned in early February by President Jonathan, God willing.
The beauty of Kashimbilla the last time I was there with the
Ministers of Water Resources and Culture and Tourism is that
the place is so beautiful for tourism. One of the largest hydro
power plants in United States makes more money from
tourism than it makes from power generation. And there is no
reason we cannot replicate same at Kashimbilla and Mambilla
and that was why the Minister of Culture and Tourism went
with us on that trip.
Alternative means of power generation
Other means of generating of power, which we have neglected
for a long time but which this administration is working very
hard on is coal. There was a time coal gave all the power that
old Eastern Nigeria needed but that eventually fizzled out. But
right now government is determined to bring coal to power
back to the mainstream.
Government is determined and the President has authorised
and given licences for mining of coal to only companies that
indicate that they will use the coal to generate electricity. So
government is working very hard to ensure that coal resources
that Nigeria has is utilised. And I think this is a very positive
development because we can at full production get as much
as 10 per cent of all our power needs from coal fired turbines.
In addition to that, we have renewables. It is only in this
administration that the Ministry of Power has come to utilise
renewable energy to power rural communities that are not
connected to the national grid. The ones we did at Durumi,
Sape and Waru communities in Abuja got us to celebrate on
January 13, 2015, one year of uninterrupted electricity supply
using solar panels.
The reason people complain so much about solar power is due
to abandonment, especially the ones used for streetlighting.
Nobody maintains them by cleaning the panels. People don’t
realise that once dust and rain settle on the panel and they
are not cleaned for a long time, the clogs on the panels
prevent irradiation from the sun to penetrate the surface of the
solar panel. So at the end of the day, it lasts for only few
months and it’s dead. So it’s not true that solar panels are
not good or don’t last. It’s because of this attitude of our
people about poor maintenance culture.
And for one year now, these communities have been enjoying
unhindered access to power through solar energy alone. And I
think this is a positive thing that this administration has
achieved and Mr. President on the same day, last year, flagged
off ‘‘Operation Light Up Rural Nigeria’’ because we intend to
replicate this in every state of Nigeria and then invite them
when we have in place the financial and legal structure to
make sure that private enterprises can utilise this.
In fact, many of our young men and women can choose to
take power to small villages and set up solar plants for them
because right now in homes, if they are not going to switch on
refrigerators or air conditioners, solar panels can be used to
generate light just with battery storage, solar panels can
generate all the lightening needed.
So,we can encourage our young people to create jobs for
themselves by doing this in rural communities wherever they
can agree with the people on the kind of tariffs they can
recover from that.
Nigeria is so blessed because every part of the country is
amenable to solar power but it is not so with wind power.
With wind, you need a certain minimum of wind velocity. For
some, it’s five meter per second and in many parts of Nigeria,
you cannot get that at ordinary height of 10 meters from the
ground five meters per second of wind. You have to go as
high as 50 meters and 100 meters to get five to 10 meters
and so on. And some of the turbines designed for wind power
generation need 10 meters per second. If they are installed in
areas that have three meters per second, you won’t get up to
one megawatt if it is a 10 megawatts plant. So that is why
we are not emphasising wind energy so much, until we have
done a national survey and audit of wind velocity all over the
country. But we are doing that for solar because every part of
Nigeria is amenable to solar power supply.
Challenges of meeting targets
It is a complex situation. For instance, if you look at what we
are doing alongside deliverables and you measure the
performance of those who are doing those deliverables, you
can project. For instance, by December 2014, we were sure
that we will hit 5,000 megawatts not the 4,500 that we got.
But we had no gas. And like I said earlier, with most of these
new NIPP projects, nobody thought about giving them gas
when they started the construction. It is this administration
that has not only gone to design but to work such that by
last week, we could really say that we have connected all of
them. But connecting them to gas is not the same as getting
the gas available because you must get the gas producing
companies incentivised. That was the reason we had to
synergise with the Ministry of Petroleum Resources, Central
Bank of Nigeria (CBN) and the regulator, NERC, to make sure
they raise the price of gas from lower than $1.50 cents to $
2.50 cents plus additional 80 cents for transportation. That is
in all $3.30 cents. That has never happened before. There was
a time it was 10 cents, then up to 50 cents for a long time. So
nobody was incentivised. The International Oil Companies
(IOCs) don’t care about gas. Their sole interest is in crude oil.
They only produce gas because government has compelled
them to do so. Otherwise, they would prefer to flare the gas.
It is much easier for them to flare the gas than to start
channelling it to the power generating companies to generate
electricity.
Having said that, we now set this target, knowing fully well
that by December we had the capacity to generate 5,000
megawatts but there was no gas. And we could not do that.
But when we sustained 4,300 to 5,500 for weeks, they
vandalised in both axis; Trans Niger and Trans Forcados. And
then we shut down again to less than 4,000 and even got as
low as 3,400 megawatts. So, these things are very complex.
And that was the reason I started telling people at a point,
that there is no point predicting.
Bridging huge metering gap
The issue about metering now is that government is
embarking on a special intervention by mopping up as much
as possible most of the meters produced by local
manufacturers and give them to Discos to supply without any
payment by consumers.
Well, it is very likely that these Discos have bought their own.
But I tell you, it is impossible to meter all Nigerians within the
next two years. It is not going to work, considering the fact
that more than 50 per cent of Nigerians are not metered so
the logistics needed to meter everybody will not be possible in
the next couple of years. So, government is acting as a
catalyst by going ahead to use its lean resources to procure
one million meters so that more Nigerians will break away
from estimated billing.