Why National Grid Will Continue To Collapse – Power Minister
About The Author
The Minister of Power, Adebayo Adelabu has declared that the National Grid would continue to collapse until the repair on Ugwachi-Bauchi-Makurdi line is executed.
He further disclosed that the attempts to repair the line have been hampered by insecurity in the north and, therefore, called for the insecurity to be addressed.
In his words, the inability to fix the damaged line as a result of insecurity is putting undue pressure on existing infrastructure and has made the grid fragile.
Adelabu also pointed out that the grid is old and requires a total overhaul to make it efficient.
He however denied reports that the National Grid collapsed 12 times in 2024, saying it experienced only 8, out of which 5 were full and 3 partial collapses.
Naija News reports the Minister made the submissions on Monday while defending his ministry’s 2025 budget figures before the Senate Committee on Power.
During the interaction, Adelabu couldn’t give any assurances that the grid would not suffer future collapses, but promised that the Power Ministry would swiftly restore it when any incident occurs.
He said, “We had plans to stabilise the grid and other transmission infrastructure. I am happy to also inform you that out of the 8 collapses of the national grid that we experienced during 2024, five were full collapses, while 3 were actually partial collapses. Out of the 5 full collapses that we experienced, 3 out of them were actually due to generation problems where we had issues with sudden reductions in generation compared to the power being taken up by the users which affected the frequency imbalance on the grid and the reason for this was not far fetched.
“Out of the 5, three were from generation, while two were from vandalisation issues and I don’t want to emphasise this vandalisation issue because we are all aware of what happened.
“As I am talking talk to you now, we have not rectified the major line which is the Shiroro-Mando-Kaduna line which is why our grid is so, so fragile. Because it is only one line that is still supplying power to the north and it is being burdened unnecessarily and we know the implication of this on infrastructure technicalities.
“So it is still the insecurity that has not enabled us to fix the Shiroro-Kaduna-Mando line which has been handed over to the security agencies. Till today, they have not even fixed it Ugwachi-Bauchi-Makurdi line.”
The Minister told the lawmakers that the Power Ministry achieved about 50 to 55 percent of its budget to date and expressed hope that between now and June 2025, which is the cut off date for the current cycle, there would be up to 80 percent performance.
He also justified the figures for the 2025 proposal and pleaded for more funds to be made available for agencies like the Transmission Company of Nigeria (TCN) to execute its mandate.
He said, “If you look at the 2025 budget, the total budget for the sector, which is the ministry and its agencies is about N2 trillion. Out of the N2trillion, overhead and personnel which is salaries is about N10.5bn. Out of this N2.086 trillion, you see that the the whole recurrent is about 80 percent of this. So I will go to the Federal ministry and you will see that out of N1.189 trillion for the Federal ministry as the capital budget, N810 billion is for loan repayment.
“That is N585billion and N225billion for multilateral and bilateral tied loans to the power sector. That is PPSR and the multilateral and bilateral tied loan, distribution sector recovery. Plus that is the N150billion that is meant to be transferred as our counterpart funding for the Siemens project. So N150billion plus N810, that is N960billion taken out of N1.189billion, leaving N229billion for the power ministry. So out of this N229billion, N29billion is for ongoing projects in the power ministry. I will try to explain the N200billion additional which are for new projects based on proposed activities for the power sector.
