Of power and the burden of manufacturers

WITH the resources at Nigeria’s beck and call, irregular electricity supply should be unheard of in the country. Nigeria has a proven gas reserve of 187 trillion cubic feet (TCF), which is sufficient to power 60,000 megawatts (MW) power plants continuously for 100 years; 40,000 MW plants for 150 years and 20,000 MW for 301 years. Indeed, the gas resource endowments of the country, if properly utilised for electricity supply, have the potential to turn Nigeria into a country with uninterrupted electricity supply which can meet the needs of many generations.

Similarly, being the seventh largest supplier of crude oil in the world, the country has enormous quantities of crude oil that could be deployed for electricity generation. Nigeria is also rich in hydro, wind and solar energies which are in excess of the requirements for adequate electricity provision. However, despite all these natural endowments, electricity supply in Nigeria has gone from the sublime to the ridiculous, cascading from about 6,000 megawatts to a little above 3,000 megawatts, which is equivalent to about 25 watts per person per year, barely enough for one electricity bulb per person. Consequently, erratic power supply and incessant system failures have been the order of the day in the country. This has forced the manufacturing sector to operate below capacity. It has also crippled the industrial sector and rendered the small and medium sectors impotent while impairing the agriculture sector, as most irrigation lines are run by electricity.

Irregular power supply has resulted in high cost of doing business in the country and has robbed many of the companies operating in the country of their competitive edge as they have to spend extra resources on generating power on their own. According to Dr. Frank Udemba Jacobs, president of the Manufacturers Association of Nigeria (MAN), manufacturers spent over N378 billion on power generation to run their operations in the last three years. Breaking this down, Jacobs said that the manufacturers of consumable and non-consumable products spend N126 billion yearly to generate power. This high cost of doing business has also increased the level of unemployment in the country, as many companies which cannot cope with the high cost of alternative power generation have had to lay off many of their personnel.

It is however disturbing that as critical as power generation is to the prosperity of the country, the government does not attach much importance to it. Power generation in the last two years has witnessed a plunge. Sadly, rather than tackling the issue frontally to get lasting solutions through a robust and holistic approach, the government has merely engaged in ballroom dancing; one step forward and two backwards. Every new government goes against what its predecessors did and tries to reinvent the wheel. As a result, momentum is lost and investment fails to yield the expected results. Success in power generation will be elusive for as long as efforts are disparate and investment is not sustained.

To achieve concrete results, the government needs to work with all the stakeholders in the industry. The generating companies and the distribution companies are critical stakeholders and should be integrated into the idea generation and implementation system of the industry so that everyone involved in the process can work towards the same goal. Until the government takes seriously the issue of power generation, the plan to grow the country economically and liberate the citizenry from the pangs of hunger, deprivation and unemployment will remain only a dream.