 The federal government on Wednesday claimed that it has solved the power outage being experienced across the country. However, the government blamed pipeline vandalism, greed, collapses, among other challenges as causes of the recurrent nationwide blackout. The Minister of Power, Abubakar Aliou, disclosed this while briefing state House correspondents. This was after the week's virtual Federal Executive Council meeting, FAC meeting, presided over by Vice President Yamashibajo. But we are now being joined by O'Neill Lajewamy, an energy expert. We're glad to have you with us, O'Neill. Thank you. Thank you, Maureen. Thanks for having me. Well, the national grid collapsed twice in 48 hours. It's 206 in a decade now. All right. So 206 times in 10 years. In 10 years. So add that to the current fear crisis that Nigerians are going through and just paint a picture. You probably have a horror movie, Star in a Shoe. I know. I know, right? I think there's a joke about every Nigerian should make it to heaven because of the hardship. I must say it's really hard being a Nigerian. Yeah. Really sad. Okay. So this is more often than not blamed on the activities of vandals. How come we are at this point, over and over again, we have all these kind of excuses being made? How is it that a country as big as this country cannot secure its facilities? Now, I really think it's on seriousness in the Nigerian entity itself, the government on its own, not being able to pivot past where we are at the moment. I'm afraid to tell you there's no solution to this now, relying on the grid. So if you look at Nigeria power sector, it's heavily relied on the national grid and I explained the grid is an interconnected transmission network, which is connected to generators, gas and gas generators and thermal plants, hydro power, what not. There's a wide range of load. So any disruption along this grid will result to collapse and some of them, for example, from what we've learned yesterday, the grid collapsed like you've rightfully said was caused by gas vandalism. Well, unplanned downtime in one of the power plants. So the way the grid is modelled is there must be a stable grid at every point in time. Right now, we're floating around 4000 megawatts in Nigeria, which is a big smile. 4000 megawatts for 198 million people. Yeah, we've been on it for a long time. South Africa generates 58.5, is it up to 60,000 megawatts? And they are just 58 million people. Correct, correct. And we're doing 4000 for a population of 200 million people. So it tells you that we're in a terrible situation. I mean, TCN admitted that the grid collapse is not going to end. It's not going to be solved in any way. Like, I've been clamoring for decentralization of power, all right? You cannot be generating power in far, you know, up high. By the way, the three power plants that cause the grid collapse has been identified. You have the Oqba'i, Ajip. You have the Kalaba'i power plant. And then you also have the... Is it the Shiroro? No, not the Shiroro. Oqba'i, Kalaba'i. And I think the one where NDPHC, Nigeria's a power holding company. OK. Sorry. I think that... Anyway, just throw out them. Let's move on. Three of them collapse and somewhere as a result of vandalism, pipeline vandalism. And it was unplanned, unscheduled maintenance that just the power plant went down. But of course, when there's stability or cause, the power drops on the grid and it collapses. So that's just basically what's happening. But again, they could have been a solution. I'll let you speak and maybe I'll come back to that. Well, one would have thought that, you know, we had NEPA. And then a whole lot of stuff happened and the discos and the jencos came on board. And we thought, with all of that, we're probably going to have some sort of relief. I don't know, what's the difference between when it was NEPA and now that is... Well, the past, it was privatized in 2013. And that's when the distribution companies were, you know, privatized. And then you have the generation companies, jencos and discos. But again, that was meant to increase the investments in the sector. But unfortunately, there's been a lot of losses. You know, coupled with a lot of blame game. One is the federal government not keeping to the terms, you know, that the discos signed on to. For example, I think yesterday or so, the discos, the distribution companies complained about the debt, which is about 140 billion being owed by some of the federal government institutions. So, coupled with the tariff that was being used for the simulation of the tariff, sorry, the effects, you know. So there's a lot of trouble. The issues all boil around regulatory framework, all right? A serious sense about government adhering to the regulation itself, keeping to the regulation. I mean, imagine if we're going to own an electricity bill. I mean, how do you expect the discos to cope? There are very few of the discos that are really able to really put their heads over water. So it's just a quagmire we find ourselves in. You know, you started by saying there is no solution to this. Well, the federal government claimed that it has solved the power outage problem. Contrary statements here. Yeah, I mean, today I think it was 459, the minister, Bwabaka Ali did mention that it's been restored. The grid has been restored. The grid has been restored. The grid will collapse again because we don't have what is called a spinning reserve. There should be a spinning reserve that backs up the grid, all right? So when you have a drop in the power supply on the grid, it makes it unstable, unstable rather, and then the grid shuts, all right? But if you have that situation, there should be a spinning reserve that comes in, that shoots into the grid and backs up. We don't have that back up. You know, I've had the privilege of speaking with energy experts such as yourself over time. And when you listen to them, they profess such amazing solutions. They talk about it a lot. And we had Bert Inagi at some point who advocated for coal. Where are we in all of this? So the thing is, like very well said, you can have coal in Enugu, generate power, fine. You could have, we have hydropower. By the way, 80% of the power generation is through gas thermal plants. 20% is hydropower. You can have solar. There's a lot of developments going on in off grid. I must tell you that. I must give it to, I mean, you may not see it now, but a lot of people, even in rural areas in Genter, in 4 hours power. Because our power is decentralized through a solar hybrid mini grid. They are currently operating. They are universities currently on 24 hours power. So why don't all the states, or at least a whole large number of the states, generate their own power? That's exactly what I'm saying about decentralization. The power sector, the power supply must be decentralized. You cannot rely on the grid coming all the way from Sapele to Oshobo, the control center, and then feeding legacies. Okay, so what is the problem? Is it that the state governments themselves are not active enough, they're not making themselves viable enough, or is the federal government stopping them from taking the move? Well, it's been that for a long time. I mean, the regulatory issue around it was to be 40. But I understand, I think last month or so, the state were clamoring for their own, to be able to generate their own power. I think I said that was passed. I'm not sure. I need to check it out. But if, for example, a state as serious as legal state can provide 24 hours power to a citizen by getting off the national grid, and I'm very telling you, there are serious people that can do this. Okay, well, we just hope that that happens. O'Neill Alajwamy, energy expert has been our guest as we take a look at the energy situation in the country. Thank you so much for your time. Please do subscribe to our YouTube channel and don't forget to hit the notification button so you get notified about fresh news updates.