 Welcome back to the breakfast in Plosivia, Africa. We are looking at the power sector at this point following the collapse of the national grid. Now, as Nigerians are experiencing an epileptic power supply and a hike in electricity in fuel prices, electricity distribution, companies, discos in the country said the recent collapse of the grid occurred at 10.40am and disrupted power supply within their networks. Consequently, you have these discos in affected states like Lagos, Kaduna, Abia, Nambara, Eboni, Inugu, Imo State, among others. Apologize to your customers and promise to keep them updated on the situation as close monitoring of the situation with a partnership with the TCNs as on going on to determine the cost and the timeline for a solution. Now, the grid has experienced this disruption in February, May, July and August 2021. Now, in 2022, we also have reports saying that it would be the second time. We do have a guest in the studio. He is an energy expert, O'Neill Lajuwumi, joining us as a group CEO of Wavelent. It's good to have you join us this morning in our studio. Thank you, Messi. Good to have you. Alright, so let's start with this now. How does this really make you feel as an energy expert, as a Nigerian, a total collapse and the fact that the nation is thrown into a gross stateness? I mean, for me, it's more like a broken record. I've been on TV shows for quite a number of time and talking on this matter. I don't know, I mean, where we're headed at this point in time in the country. But of course, I'm privy to some developments that soon, or maybe soon, we'll start to see some improvements in the power supply. But of course, we cannot say much because we've been hoping for a long time in Nigeria for a better electricity supply. And way before I was born, I'm sure there's been a lot of epileptic power going on. But since I've been growing up, it's been the same story one day after another. But of course, I mean, where we are right now, we shouldn't be there as a country. There's a lot that can be done to have reliable and sustainable power. Interesting. So what are your thoughts on the generating, let me say the reasons given by those involved, you know, the distribution companies have put up announcements telling us, oh, it's not our fault to, you know, ask the others. The Transmission Company of Nigeria had to put up a statement earlier to say what's happening or what will come is not their fault. They're only transmitting what they can get. And then the gearing company is talking about, of course, issues with payment and collection of monies, you know, from the distribution companies. And of course, to look at the amount of power produced by Nigeria in terms of megawatts. So what are your thoughts on the reasons being given? Well, Kofi, thank you so much. I mean, let me just break it out a little bit, right? You've mentioned most part of it. The power sector has three key major value chain. One is the generation company. In fact, four actually, I'll take it back. One is the generation company. The other one is the transmission company. And we have the distribution company and then the gas suppliers. So there's a lot of factors that could result to grid collapse, partial grid collapse or total grid collapse. And yes, of course, there's the, I mean, the TCN. And of course, at some point, may not really understand what has triggered the grid collapse. And if you remember, as I 1040 am yesterday, there was no real reason for it. I said, we're still investigating it. And a lot of factors, one could be the gas supply. For example, last month, we've experienced two grid collapse this year already. And it's just barely a quarter of the year, right? The last, in general, the factor that caused the grid collapse was the pipeline vandalism. So there was gas supply, it was cut off. The supply is the generation company. The trans-fogados pipeline that feeds a motor show and them lot was cut off. So when that happens, there's a drop in the load that goes into the network. And when that drop occurs, the grid collapse, because it's not stable. So that's one factor. You also had the egg being shut down, egg being fired, came up. I mean, that again, there's a drop. So grid collapse occurs when there's disturbances along the transmission. Okay. So but let's look at the fact that the country has like 12 generating power plants. Three of which are hydro and nine are gas powered. And it feels like we have been very dependent on just you. So why limit yourself to just two plants when you have 12? Yeah. I mean, 80% of power generation Nigeria is gas fired. The right 20 is from other sources. 80%. 80%. So yeah, so if you have gas supply problem, the grid will collapse. The problem with the Nigerian power sector and Nigerian power supply industry is the fact that is centralized. And I said this without a time without number, right? You generate power all the way from Sapele and you transmit to Obumosho, where the TCN control center is and then I'll start to distribute. You understand? So now that can all work along that line that happened. They could be disturbances. For example, I mentioned the gas pipeline cuts off to the power plant in Sapele. What happens? The Obumosho Transmission Center cannot receive power. The grid is going to collapse, right? And then again, you have the transmission company. There are a lot of obsolete equipment along the line. Most of the installation I've done since 1960. Of course, I understand there are some upgrades currently ongoing. Couple with that. You also have the distribution company. The distribution company also has some problem in all of these because if they don't take the power that the transmission company is willing out, then again, the system becomes overloaded. Again, that could result to collapse. So there are different factors. One collapse maybe has different factors for reasons. But of course, back to your question, why are we relying on gas fire? Just two. The hydro power plant, for example, is what we have going on at the moment because that's not been affected by gas supply. But of course, that also has its own problems. It gets affected by low levels of water. Because the minister of power at Bukalio initially last week said that the poor power supply situation is caused by low water levels. Is that true? Bearing in mind you've said 80% of a power supply comes from gas. Yeah. I mean, I don't know that fact, to be honest, but it's very possible because this year alone we've witnessed a lot of vandalism in the pipeline and that's the feedstock that supplies the power plant. Generation companies do not have gas to fire the gas at the power plant. They cannot supply power to the transmission. The transmission cannot supply to the distribution network. The distribution network cannot supply to us the customers. So that's a lot of problems. So it brings us back to the same book of saying that if we have, why do we not have to depend on the two that we have? Because it's the generation. You have the discourse telling you we cannot give what we don't have. So if you're generating 5,000 megawatt or 4,000 or thereabout, then you would have to distribute this among the people and that's quite limiting if you're looking at the entire population. But you have mentioned the issue of decentralization of these plants, generating plants. So we don't talk about the collapse. Are you now saying, should we be thinking or looking in the direction of having these plants sometimes installed in the northern parts of the country as well? I agree. So if you hit the nail on the coffin, one of the major problems is the centralization of the whole power generation and also the transmission. So decentralization is one thing I've been clamoring for a long time. You cannot generate power all the way from Sapele and transmit to Lagos. You know, it's not going to work. So what we need to start, what we need to start to look at is regionalizing these power supplies. So Lagos, for example, should be able to generate some power. And you know that has been going on, a matter that has been going on last month. The state governments have took up that fight and they want to start to look into that area until we have that kind of intervention. We're going to be facing this Greek collapse for a long time. So decentralization is one of the major solutions to all of these problems. It's been said that, you know, by the GENCOs that it's not always about the lack of production capacity in terms of the megawatts. For instance, we told that in 2015, you know, they had 6,616 megawatts available. Out of that, 3,606 was taken and 3,010 megawatts was stranded, wasn't taken. They also said that, you know, for instance, there was, you know, so we have this. You have 7,040 megawatts, an average of that, of which 3,212 megawatts were utilized, even a stranded amount of 3,828. So what accounts for this, that Nigeria produces more electricity than it's actually given its citizens, but they're not able to take this up when you have some stranded? Sure. So again, the stranded power comes from the problem of the transmission network. So I've talked about the path one, which is the gas problem. Now we move to the transmission network. The transmission network has got obsolete, you know, the obsolete. They've been there for a long time and little or no investment has gone into that upgrade. They constantly need to upgrade the system to make it robust, to be able to take the power that is being generated by the genco. It's called the wheeling capacity. The wheeling capacity of the TCN is badly, you know, it's not put together, you know, in a fair way, put it that way. It's not put together and then they cannot, the power becomes stranded. The generation capacity becomes stranded. You cannot wheel it to the distribution company. Of course, some distribution companies are also rejecting power. They're rejecting power because they're rejecting to take the power that's available because they cannot distribute it. Again, their systems, the distribution systems are obsolete. So transmission network has not been upgraded to meet current demand? Yes, no, no. It's not. And we have to let go of what we... It's stranded. We can't even wheel it to... You can't wheel the maximum power that is available to the distribution company. The transmission company is responsible. It's the most, you know, you put it like that. It's a central value. It's the central provider of the services in the value chain. So anything that affects the transmission company affects the whole... And the government has to relinquish that one? Of course, it's still centralized. But we also know that, I mean, if we're talking progression and making progress, countries have moved beyond the hydroelectric power plant and the Tamil power plant. And for us, we're very dependent on this. Shouldn't we be discussing having state harnessing resources looking at, you know, those states that can produce coal to harness it? Yes. And we begin to look at coal, you know, plants, coal power plants. I mean, plants that will be, you know, powered by coal at this point in time. Should we not be thinking forward in this direction? Well, it's... You've got a good point, but it's going to be a bit difficult. The reason for that is the world at large is moving beyond, you know, fossil fuel generation is going to green energy, all right? So raising funding for those type of production may be, you know, difficult because there's not a lot of funding for that. But of course, yes, I am for... I'm out of here for however we can get out of this situation. We should exploit every possible method that can get out of this situation. So if we have coal, I know some countries now are doing the fire and the power plants. We green coal, you know, coal that are environmental friendly. We can look at that. We can look at hydropower. We can look at renewable energy, I mean, solar, solar power. But again, it boils down to decentralizing this power. You cannot... Even if you have coal power or you have solar power, you cannot put it on the grid because the grid is not reliable. The grid is obsolete and cannot even take additional generation. So it needs to be decentralized. Your point is if it's in Enugu as coal, can we now look out to make power generation in Enugu with coal? So the current constitutional amendment processes is actually now... They passed that to now for states to... Yes, yes. So I mean, it would be brilliant if that becomes... it becomes implemented because another thing for us is speaking good English and passing laws and they'll never get implemented. But the system and the framework we've not upgraded to even meet current reality? No, we haven't. We haven't. But I must say like for example, some states that are already making moves like Lagos state for example, a couple of the ancillaries, the public cities that are powered by independent power companies, through maybe compressed natural gas and whatnot, I'm supposed to be in the next few days. I mean, the state government is looking at powering their sectorial with gas. You know, I just mentioned a few days ago. So a lot of states are beginning to look at... Do you have gas pipelines crisscrossing river states? You do. You have. And I know one of the major international companies has pipelined gas to be able to supply to some private institutions. Yeah, you have gas in Lagos. You have gas pipelines in Lagos. Underground. Yeah, underground. I mean, they're all underground. You have gas pipeline that has come to VI. So I mean, these things are... it's just a crazy excuse my word, a terrible situation right now. And I hope that we'll get there someday. There's a lot of intervention going on in the power sector. For example, according to the special advisor to the president, Ahmad Zakari, we need $41 billion to improve power supply in Nigeria. So looking at the... I mean, in the interim now, the fact that you have this collapse, because this is our reality, and we need to get out of it, what would you be suggesting? We know that the government and stakeholders are already having the emergency and marathon meetings, but we don't know, I mean, because it would not be the first time that these meetings are being held. Yeah. It's the outcome, what happens, but what can be done? Is there anything that can be done in the meantime to savage the situation? Yes, we know that the major issue is the fact that the power plants are centralized and that's not helping any issue, but what can be done at this point in time as a solution? Well, Messi, thank you so much. Unfortunately, it's not going to be a fire brigade approach. You cannot have this solved immediately within the next six to one year, six months to one year. We need strategic decisions to be made. One of them is the regulatory framework, and I'm glad Kofi did mention law has been passed by state government to be able to generate their power. I need to check that out very well. That is one. NERC, Nigeria Electricity Regulation Company, must be strengthened to be able to really penalize power, the value chain, whoever is the weakest link in the value chain must be able to penalize them, alright, strengthen them. Also, the regulatory framework needs to be adhered to, alright. That's one. That's two, right? We've talked about decentralization. We've talked about the regulatory framework, and now we'll talk about investments in the power sector. I know the Nigerian government, I mean, within the last few years, there's a lot going on. There's a Nigerian Economic Sustainability Plan of the federal government, which is currently ongoing at the moment, alright. But of course, we're not going to see that happen really quick. We're not going to see that happen real quick. The development is going to take some time. Alright. The generating companies have been crying over a debt, 1.634 trillion-dollar debt, and they've also been crying, asking for the fixing of the national grid, which you've talked about, and hopefully this can be done. Otherwise, you seem to be saying, we'll continue to have this problem. I want to thank you very much for your time. I know Lajoomi is an energy expert, and he's been our guest this morning on the breakfast on Plus CvAfrica. Thank you for coming. Thank you for coming. We appreciate it. Thank you so much. Appreciate it. It's time to go. Mrs Arup. Of course. It's been a fantastic time, having this national discussion in the power sector, and also looking at the educational sector. If you missed out on any part of the conversation, it's alright to follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, but Plus CvAfrica, and Plus CvAfrica Live Star, thanks for watching. Always I am Mrs Arup. Have a great day. And I'm Kofi Bartels. We return tomorrow morning. Keep watching Plus CvAfrica. Good morning.