The Federal Government has approved plans to build new Eastern and Western electricity grids in a major push to tackle Nigeria’s recurring national grid collapses.
Minister of Power, Joseph Tegbe, disclosed this at a recent HBSAN energy conference in Lagos, revealing that procurement processes for the projects would begin soon, with Nigerians expected to feel the impact within two to three years.
Tegbe said President Bola Tinubu had approved the initiative as part of efforts to strengthen the country’s fragile electricity transmission network and address decades of infrastructure decay.
He explained that the government had divided Nigeria into three energy zones, with priority attention on Lagos and the Abuja corridors, which he said account for a significant share of the country’s electricity demand.
“If you fix Lagos and you fix the Abuja corridors, you’ve solved more than half of the problem of Nigeria,” the minister said.
He added that improving operational efficiency alone would not solve the crisis without expanding and upgrading the national transmission grid.
The minister also disclosed that a nationwide technical audit of electricity infrastructure was underway to identify the specific causes of failures and determine which facilities required urgent repairs or replacement.
According to him, the exercise would prevent the government from wasting scarce resources on equipment that was not responsible for particular faults.
“I don’t want to fix transformer issues where I have conductor and relay problems. I don’t want to fix insulators where the challenges I actually have are towers,” Tegbe said.
He said the audit would be completed within weeks, after which the government would identify priority areas for intervention.
Tegbe blamed part of the transmission network’s weakness on ageing infrastructure, revealing that some electricity towers and transmission lines dated back about 50 years.
The minister said he was surprised by the extent of the problem after inspecting some facilities, including infrastructure bearing the logo of the former Electricity Corporation of Nigeria (ECN), which existed before the National Electric Power Authority (NEPA).
“This government has inherited a problem of 50 years,” he said, adding that some transmission towers and lines had deteriorated over time.
The proposed grid expansion comes amid persistent concerns over Nigeria’s electricity supply and repeated national grid disturbances, which have plunged homes and businesses into darkness.
However, with the new projects expected to deliver benefits in two to three years, Nigerians will have to wait to see whether the planned investments can provide a lasting solution to the country’s longstanding power transmission challenges.
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