Yesterday, blackouts persisted in most states of the federation with Electricity Distribution Companies (DisCos) restating reasons for the development.
Consumers who spoke to our correspondent lamented that the situation has been worse since January than it was last year.
“In February, my area had an average of four to five hours of power supply daily but since last month, I have deliberately decided not to think about electricity because some days it is zero,” said Catherine Odeyingbo, a major frozen foods seller in Ikeja, Lagos.
Many homes across the country are suffering from incessant power cuts or no electricity at all for days. Yet, the weather has been extremely hot.
Most industrial clusters in Lagos, Kano, Port Harcourt, and other major cities that enjoy preferential power supply have also witnessed severely low supply.
The frequent collapse of the national grid has further compounded the power crisis.
A Chief Executive Officer of one of the DisCos, who asked not to be named, said one of the surest ways to guarantee regular supply was for the Federal Government to improve the weak wheeling capacity of the Transmission Company of Nigeria (TCN) through investment.
The TCN last weekend said after it restored the collapsed national grid on Friday, some DisCos were unable to evacuate their allocations.
TCN Public Affairs, General Manager, Ndidi Mbah, said: “Total Generation is around 4,000 MW, not 5,508 MW.”
Mbah explained that since DisCos covered specific franchise areas, it was their duty to ensure that electricity got to their customers there.
“TCN does not distribute electricity,” she said, urging our reporter to “call the distribution companies covering the specific areas that you know for sure have outage issues”.
Eko Electricity Distribution Company (EKEDC), Ikeja Electric (IE), Benin Electricity Distribution Company (BEDC), Ibadan Electricity Distribution Company (IBEDC), Abuja Electricity Distribution Company (AEDC), Enugu Electricity Distribution Company (EEDC) and Jos Electricity Distribution Company (JEDC) said the causes of the outages were beyond them.
The Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission (NERC) announced a new regulation requiring all DisCos to procure at least 10 per cent of their contracted energy from embedded generation sources, with half coming from renewable sources.
The regulator set an April 1, 2025 deadline.
