The Federal Government has defended the continuous collapse of the national grid, stating that it is inevitable, News About Nigeria reports.
The Minister of Power, Adebayo Adelabu, made this known on Wednesday when he unveiled Hexing Livoltek, an electricity metre manufacturing company in the Lekki area of Lagos State.
He noted that for the collapse to end, the nation will need to have power grids in different regions or states.
He stated that with the deplorable state of the country’s power infrastructure, the grid will continue to collapse, adding that it cannot be averted.
Adelabufurther noted that the decentralisation of the power sector would help the plan to build grids in each region, saying this was made possible by the Electricity Act signed by President Bola Tinubu in 2023.
He maintained that the situation will be inevitable without sufficient investment in the sector.
He stated, “This Electricity Act has decentralised power. It has enabled all the subnational governments, the state government, and the local government, to be able to participate in the generation, transmission, and distribution of electricity. We all rely on a single national grid today; if there is a disturbance of the national grid, it affects all 36 states. It shouldn’t be like that. This will enable us to start moving gradually towards having regional groups and possibly having state grids.
“And each of these grids will be removed and shielded from each other. So, if there’s a problem with a particular grid, only the state where it belongs will be affected, not the entire nation. So, this is one of the impacts this Electricity Act will have.
“We keep talking about grid collapse. Grid collapse, grid collapse, whether it’s a total collapse, partial collapse, or slight trip-off. This is almost inevitable as it is today, given the state of our power infrastructure, the infrastructure is in deplorable conditions, so why won’t you have trip-offs? Why won’t you have collapses, either total or partial? It will continue to remain like this until we can overhaul the entire infrastructure. What we do now is to make sure that we manage it.”
