 Welcome back from that report, let's get into the crux of the matter as we look at the solutions to the power issue in the country. My guest, Dr. Engineer Ido'u Oyubanjo, is a renowned power system engineer. He is a Fellow of the Nigerian Society of Engineers, FNSE, Fellow of the Nigerian Institution of Power Engineers, Fellow of the Nigerian Institution of Electrical and Electronic Engineers, and the Chartered Power Systems Engineer from the UK. Ido'u has distinguished himself in the power sector, both in Nigeria and the UK, where he worked meritoriously for over a decade. He is the former Chief Technical Officer, FGN Power Company of Nigeria appointed by former President Mohamed Buhari for the Presidential Power Initiative, PPI, popularly known as the Siemens Project. He is now the Managing Director, EATFUN, Power Engineering Consultants Limited. He is Mr. Power System because he has his BSE, MSC, and PhD in Power Systems from the University of Manchester United Kingdom. Good morning to you Mr. Oyubanjo, thanks for joining us on Business Insights. Thank you very much Justin, I'm very happy to be with you and my welcome regards to our viewers all over the world. Thank you. Let's just get straight into it, because there are myriads of challenges, you know, the devlin power and the electricity sector in the country, but specifically, let me just put it plainly, what exactly are the main problems with our power sector? Thank you very much for that. Just as you have said, there are myriads of problems with the power sector in Nigeria because for the last 60 years or more, we have not been able to have uninterrupted power supply. This must be a real challenge. But something that has been in existence for over 100 years can never be unsolvable. So we have complex issues, but the problem of the Nigerian power sector cannot be taken in isolation of the Nigerian problem. So it has to be viewed in the context of the Nigerian problem. I would just mention the most critical problems because I cannot, in a session like this, cannot see the juggernaut of conundrum of problems in the electricity sector in Nigeria. But I would take these very four important ones, and then in subsequent discussions, we talk about the solutions. One, the most critical problem we have now is the mismatches in the electricity value chain. And that means you have generation of up to 13,000 megawatts installed capacity. I'm not talking of available capacity, but installed can be used. But we can, we have a transmission capacity of about, from latest results from TSDN, transmission from Nigeria, 8,000 megawatt. I'm not talking of the viewing capacity, which is just about 5,500 that they have done magazine in the last few years. We have a distribution capacity that is, that could be up to 11,000 megawatt, but we are only able to wield 3,500 to 400,000 megawatts. So these three numbers are huge mismatches. The 13,500 megawatt generation, about 5,500 viewing capacity of transmission, and about 3,500 getting through the distribution system to Nigerians. So those three numbers are not matching, and they should never have happened. And they occurred due to historical systemic failures. So let me stop on that one. So that is mismatches. The second one, and that's very important, is the lack of effective coordination. Now, this coordination I'm talking about is in various aspects. It's in aspects of governance, it's in the aspects of contracts, it's in the aspects of, it's in the aspects of what we call protection system coordination, so there is lack of protection system coordination. It's in the aspect of monitoring and evaluation. So that's the second problem. And this particular problem is key, because if you have investments in the power sector not coordinated in a way that one project is tied to the other and they are looked at end to end, you will have a network that is disjointed, a power system that is disjointed. The third problem that I would like to talk about is the lack of adequate metering. If you don't have metering in any power system, you are not running a power system effectively. So you are having estimated darkness, you know, you build people for what they didn't consume. This is a huge setback for any power system. So I'm glad that the current administration, the renewable agenda has clear policies to tackle all of this. The last one is the cost-repleted tariff or versus the service-based reflective tariff. So I believe those four, they are critical. Okay. All right. I haven't mentioned these four issues that you just talked about. Let me just quote something that you said in the wake of this decentralized power system. You said in one of your write-ups that the centralized power system is the fastest way to develop and industrialize Nigeria. Just last year, President General Bush signed a given pass to stage to actually get into the value chain of electricity power systems in the country. So how far can the states go in terms of selling this stuff to Nigerians per se as possible so that we can actually have effective and enough efficient and adequate power supply to the state levels? You talked about several market models. You've mentioned the state electricity markets. Can you just maybe throw more light on that, please? All right. Thank you. You are right. The renewable agenda in the policy document already made provision for the electricity act and it was signed, as you said, the night of June 2023 and this, as I said, is the fastest way to industrialize Nigeria and make power available and serve the electricity supply problem. So there are so many models that the states can follow. One, the state governments can establish the electricity markets and do something like we saw in Abia state recently. You remember, I also wrote the article about what's happening with geometric power as it did the independent power project. So such an example of IPP is a model that states should embark upon. What Nigerians should be doing now is knocking on the doors of their state governments and asking, look, establish our electricity market. Let us do what geometric has done. But this is a medium-term solution because it could take about three years without any insurance, without any Nigerian factor, if I may say, if there's anything like that, without any showstopper, it could take about three years to do such a medium-term solution. So I will talk about the short-term solution that can happen within six months to one year. But this one you have asked me is a medium-term solution where the states can get an enabling environment for private investors, states to never try to be involved other than to provide the enabling environment and support the private sector. So they will do IPPs like NABAC if you take about three years. Another thing is to do what we call franchising. The federal government and state governments will put in their laws policies around franchising the network so that private sector investors will come in, partner with the dispose and make sure they provide supply to areas of the network. And for areas that there is no network, they can, of course, build new networks. So that is another area that they can do. Then there will be regional grids. Regional grids means that, for example, the southeast region, the states in the southeast region, we connect their power grid together, surplus is in one area, will be shared with the others. The states in the northwest, northeast, southwest, and all the other regions will do the same. Now the beautiful thing is that since we already have this transmission system, it's linking them all. So if there is a surplus from Shiroro or from the northeast or from the northwest, it can easily be transferred to demand anywhere that is necessary. But first of all, it will satisfy the state, it will satisfy the region, and if there is any excess, it can push over or buy bilateral contracting. Okay. In the medium term. In the medium term. Okay. One thing I picked up from what you have just said is that leveraging on their mandate of electricity act, now state are expected to collaborate with their neighbors to form regional power markets. You know, I'm sure that will go a long way in actually stemming this issue of grid collapse that we've had over time. But I just want you to just maybe clarify more because sometime the vice president, Kashim Shatema, was at the Agbara Lightup Niger project, and there was another one at Inugosui in all of this Lightup Niger project. What effect are we going to see on power supply in the country? Excellent. This is the short-term solution. This is what needs to be done today, actually not today, before today. So October last year, the vice president flagged up the Lightup Agbara project. And then in February this year, the Lightup site Southeast project was flagged up. That is what we should be doing right now because we see the 13,000 megawatt, I talked about in the beginning, as what we have as installed capacity. And we can only get about 3,500 from it to the consumers. The remaining 9,500 up to 10,000 megawatt that we have stranded, we should immediately supply industrial clusters. And there are private investors that are really ready to work with the federal government, NDPAC, FGM Power Code, the Ministry of Power, and they are only working this. What they have to do is to supply the industrial clusters, supply manufacturing sectors at a premium price. And when they get this money, it will create some form of liquidity to bring cash that will be available to now subsidize whatever is supplied currently to all of us residential consumers. And that way we will cover the entire customer base, which is residential, commercial and industrial. So I must repeat, we should actually continue with this Lightup Nigeria project. It is a very, very important solution for Nigeria so that our manufacturing sector can thrive. They can become competitive. The economy will develop as a result. This is the thing to do in the next six to 12 months. This will create power, certainly in the next six to eight, 12 months. So it's a short-term solution. That's what we should be doing now. So for the sake of time, let's really try to cover more, we have just about two minutes for a wrap up now. So in all of this now, what other aspect are we supposed to look at to really stem this issue of power in the board? Because it is really affecting all aspects of our economy. The real sector, the manufacturing, like you mentioned, the industrial sector are being affected. What are key areas very quickly do we need to address, maybe in the short or maybe medium or long-term basis? First of all, to set up, to declare an emergency in the past sector under the leadership of the Minister of Power. These power sector task force should be created. Competence, meritocracy should be the foremost consideration. Set up these task force that will work and make sure that all these things are discussed, get sorted out. Now, metering will be very important. Metering, there is a presidential metering initiative that is coming up. But we have had several initiatives before on metering. And we have CAPMAE, we have MAAP, we had version zero and version one of a metering initiative in the last administration. This particular home must never be like that and it should form, it should be directed in a way that transparent and people will feel the impact. People will get the meters and so on and so forth. The next thing is the cost-repleted metering. I must mention this because you have seen that the base price of gas has just been increased a few days ago. And people talk about cost-repleted metering. You remember what happened when subsidy was removed from oil last year and we are all experiencing the impact. If you don't put meters before putting metering on, it's not a way to run the power system. So what we need to do is to ensure that service-based tariff should be used so that people pay for the ban here. But if they are getting only two hours or six hours and you are charging them for so much, then you cannot still increase it. I can bet you if you increase the tariff, you will never get power to the people without investment. All right, we have to go for the sake of time. But you will agree with me that we cannot really exhaust all of the issues of power in just one episode. We have to bring you back on the show so we can actually highlight other areas. And the metering on its own is just a very big topic to talk about. We'll bring you back again on the show, hopefully by next week, so we can do more justice to this issue of power supply in the country. My guest has been Dr. Ido Oyebanjo, MD, Ed Fund Power and General Consultant. Many thanks for being a part of Business Insights for today. Thank you very much. My pleasure. All right, that's the size of the show for this morning. I am Justin Akadoni. Many thanks for being there.