 Well, glad to know you stayed with us. It's still very fast on Plus TV Africa. Right now, we're looking at collapsed greed successfully restored, that's according to this TCN. We know how it's been epileptic in one year, or not in one year, from January till now, we've had like six collapse of the national greed. And that means it's more, on the average, it's more than one time per month, because we are only in the fourth month right now. So, we are talking this morning with Dr. Sam Amadi, a former chairman of the Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission, NEC. Good morning and welcome to the program, Mr. Amadi. Thank you, and good morning. Yeah. Every time we hear about the collapse of the national greed, we get worried. We are just operating with lower than 10,000 megawatts in a country of more than 200 million Naira. Let's start by establishing why this greed collapses all the time in the first place. I mean, we've been talking about this, but we cannot get enough of it. Let's just know why this greed keeps collapsing. Well, thank you very much. Greed collapse for several reasons. Over the late technical fragility of the greed. So, first, you talk about our generation. Capacity at 10,000, every day we have installed, whether they are working or not. But usually, we might have less than 4,000, 3,000, some days 2,500 available to consumers. So, that itself shows that you may not have redundancies and orders. Again, the network is bad, dilapidated, radial, not looked and so, it means that if there is any fragility at one point, it may bring down the entire system. Systemic risk, it's like a body system. You have a crash to one part of the body. It affects other parts of the body. So, you have a weak system because most of your network is dilapidated and cold. You are replacing them well on time enough. It affects also the rate and the frequency. That's the language, frequency of all these outages. Again, there is lack of coordination with the distribution and generation and transmission. The dispute companies also have bad networks. So, sometimes they can't take the load or something trips. So, primarily, you have been this incident of frequent outages, good collabs, total blackout, because your network is very weak. We have under-invested in upgrade. You don't have very diligent and focused leadership in the sector and there's also significant inefficiency in change management, in handling all this. And of course, we don't have good new technologies. Spader system that gives you more reliable coordination of the electricity network is not yet installed. So, these are some of the reasons why you have issues. Well, I hear some of the infrastructure came before independence and some immediately after independence and all that. Is it because of the cost implication? Or is it because of the carelessness or negligence that this infrastructure still remains and now they're contributing to these collabs? I think the cost is also a factor. And carelessness is also a factor. So, how much can it be that Nigeria cannot afford? Because everything hangs on power. Yes, you said cost is a part of it. But this is Nigeria we're talking about and economy hangs on power, a lot on power. So, how much can it be that a country like Nigeria cannot afford it? Because we have low generation, low capacity. It means that every unit is more expensive. We are paying more for every unit, you see? In the course of power, if you have more large quantity, the unit cost will be lower or it will be lower. So, because we have low capacity, our unit cost is very high. So, and the people are not able to pay and therefore the discourse are not able to charge very cost-effective tariffs. And therefore they don't have the revenue, so they claim and most of the people who bought these assets are not able to access funds from the money market or from the banks or from other private institutions to upgrade and they recover over a long period of time. So, because of that, you measure a capacity of the investors and because the capacity to charge high tariffs and the willingness to pay is low, the result is that there's revenue shortfall and the critical investments that need to be done are not being done. So, it's both a cost aspect, which means the revenues can also support upgrade of facilities and investment in expanded capacity, both in generation, distribution and transmission. And of course, we have also very polydashy at the policy level, maybe at the regulatory level as well and at the operational level. Where the discourse and the game course and the traditional company maybe needs to upgrade their management capability to solve some of this problem. But primarily, no investment arising from the fact that the sector is not attractive is a key driver of this problem. Yeah, but this privatization came not too long ago. It has always been a government thing, a power. It's just recently that it was privatized and that means that the government, the federal government should have done something about this. I remember the name that we have not gone past, NEPA, all the time we were shouting NEPA. NEPA was at a time when it was not privatized. It was government's thing. And I keep wondering because we see a lot of people see Nigeria as a country that if they have the will, they can do it. So, are we blaming it on the leadership? Are we blaming it on the manpower capacity that we don't have? Are we blaming it? Where did it come from? Because I don't want to blame the gencoes and the discourse. They are just newborn babies. What about Nigeria itself? I think it's broken, but if I hear you well, if I hear you well, I would say, I think you raised an issue around the privatization and its failure. I don't like it here. Yes, privatization just came now, but it has been a problem since the days of NEPA when the government, the federal government was in charge. So, is it policy that was not right? How are the countries that are having electricity, uninterrupted electricity doing it that we cannot do it as a nation? Can you hear me? Well, let me ask a question, you know. There seemed to be a little disconnect with Dr. Sam Ammadi. And as soon as we can get him to hear us or we can get his audio as well, we'll rejoin him. But we're talking about the electricity grid. You know, it collapses, and then the people, it is being restored, and then the people say, oh, we are doing something really, really lofty. At one point, we had 100 days that it went without collapse and they came out, they regulatory, the agency involved or the ministry involved came out and said, okay, we've done really well. 100 days after, we've not seen any collapse. And then like two days or three days later, it collapsed. That is what it is, they spoke too soon. So what is it that is a problem all the time we hear about this collapse? We hear that Nigeria even gives light to some other countries. Let me just say we hear. When some Dr. Ammadi returns, we'll ask him for sure. Can you hear me now, Dr. Ammadi? I think I can hear you better now. Okay, beautiful. Let me just start by establishing this. We've always said that Nigeria provides electricity for other countries. Is this true? Because I've never heard it from an authority. Yes, it's true, but look, it's historical agreement. For example, we provide to Niger, we provide to, I think, Togo, Abedah Republic, but those are small, like 100 megawatts here, 200 there. The one I finish here is to allow us to continue to use the dam. You know, they could, if they open the end of the dam from their side, it could flood. So it's a strategic diplomatic agreement for Nigeria to supply them, so as to for them to also allow us to continue to use not to flood the other end of our dam to enable tangent orders to work. The one of Ben-A-Republic and others, some historical agreement, they price to give them 100 or 200, no, not a lot of megawatts. And by the way, it's not the reason why we have problem in Nigeria in the sector, because so those power, every day about 2,000 or so megawatts is stranded, meaning we can't evacuate them. So allowing them from Legos to sell, it's not a big problem. Yeah, I'm not saying it is the reason we don't have light or we don't have power in Nigeria. I'm just asking how are they doing it that they will have uninterrupted power? I think Ghana at some point celebrated 50 years of uninterrupted power. And here we are, we're celebrating 100 days of non-collapse of the national grid at one point, was it last year or so? So I'm just wondering. Let me answer quickly. Let me answer you. I don't think, if you want to talk about Ghana has uninterrupted power. Ghana has very small power and Ghana doesn't have a passive grid like us. But Ghana is very large and every community has, everyone wants to have lights. If you go to Ghana, maybe the capital city is the only place that has that level of light. So Ghana has small generation capacity, not anything compared to Nigeria. But they are serving a smaller community in Nigeria, you're talking about 36 days of the federation and you're talking about a landmass that is, I'm talking about a 200 million people. So per capita, we are the worst in the world, meaning Nigeria has the lowest per capita energy. Even if we take our energy generation and share it across everybody, we have the lowest in the world. And it makes sense. We should be doing like 200,000 megawatts or 100,000 megawatts minimum or 80,000 to have any chance of having good enough light in the way we have urbanized. We have opened up the rural communities. If you go to anywhere in Nigeria, you see poles and lines everywhere with no light. So here, Ghana has better light in the Nakra area, but they don't have all these ambitious projects in the rural areas. Yes, they have better light, but it doesn't mean that they have a bigger grid. They have a small grid, but that small grid serve small territory. So now, if you were to advise, who should be responsible for the revamp, if you may, of the infrastructure, the power infrastructure in Nigeria? Because right now, you're talking about low investment in that sector. And that is when it has been privatized. So do we leave it in the hands of the private sector or should the federal government look at it critically and see what can be done in the shortest possible time? Because we don't believe in this band A, band B and all that. Everybody should be entitled to 24 hours per hour if it is possible. So I don't know, who should run this? Okay, we still have that problem with Dr. Sam Omadi, and we're hoping he will come back and answer the questions posed on him or to him. But just to remind you, we're talking about the national grid successfully being restored, according to the DC and the Transmission Company of Nigeria. And why should we even be talking about successful restoration of the power grid all the time? In just 2024, we've had six collapse of this grid. Six times it collapsed, this grid. So what is it that is so difficult for a country like Nigeria to do? If there is no investment coming to that area, was it a mistake to privatize it? If it was not a mistake, then what can be done? Why are they not doing it? Should there be sanctions? Should there be different policies? What is it that should be done? Because, like I said, I was asking Dr. Omadi even before he was off. A lot of Nigerians don't believe, I personally don't believe in the band A, band B, band C and all that. Everybody should have light as much as possible. After all, you are having a prepaid meter. You will use it according to your capacity. But let it not be said, because I've been relegated to group B, group C, group D, like citizens who are less worthy than others, then I will not enjoy power. Let us all enjoy the power and let's see how our capacity will carry us. So Dr. Sam Omadi, we're hoping that we will rejoin with you, but in the meantime, this is where we are. And we're also here that the federal government pays a subsidy of 205 billion Naira, that is electricity subsidy, as these schools have withheld some other monies, like 50 billion Naira in the third quarter of 2023. Okay, so we need to hear all these from Dr. Sam Omadi if he can rejoin us. But these are things that are disturbing. We need to have power. The so-called band A have not had, at least in the places that band A areas that have been since this announcement was made, have not seen where there is uninterrupted power for 20 hours. In that band A, you will have so much power for 20 hours, but there are five minutes, 10 minutes, three minutes, that they will be taking this power. So it's going on and off or on and off in one hour, maybe you have like two times the power going off for even if it's for three minutes or for five minutes. This is good enough to destroy your appliances in the house. This is good enough to disrupt the services that you're doing. For instance, if I'm here in the studio, I'm talking and I'm in band A and my studio is in band A and suddenly the light just goes off. What if I don't have the facility to keep the light until the power is restored? What if I don't have that? So it's not good enough to just say 20 hours of electricity. If we're going to have 15 hours of electricity and it is uninterrupted, I think I'd prefer that. To 20 hours that will be interrupted here and there. What if I have sold out my generator or given out to someone who is in band B or band C because I know that I'm in band A now. I can always have power for 20 hours. And 20 hours, I just have four hours of not having power. So it wouldn't do any much damage to me. So I've given out my generator only to find out that I'll be interrupted within one hour, I'll be interrupted just like the national grid six times in one hour. It doesn't make any sense to me. So whatever needs to be done, needs to be done so that we can all have that power in Nigeria. If it is less than 10,000 megawatts that we are producing, what if we produce up to 100,000 megawatts? Can it even be distributed to the people or to the consumers and all that? We hear that there are also other challenges that they are facing. You produce the light, you produce the power, but you cannot distribute it. How that works, I don't know. But if we raise the bar and say that instead of 4,000 megawatts or 5,000 megawatts, we are getting 100,000 or 200,000 megawatts, then can we distribute that? So a lot of questions need to be answered, but the thing is who should drive this process? If the private sector is not able to do that, who then should drive this? Is it the government that was not able to do this and gave it to the private sector that will run it? We don't know what the problem is or should we just resort to solar system? Anyway, we've not seen Dr. Amadi return, but this is how far we can go on this segment of the program. We thank Dr. Sam in absentia. Dr. Sam Amadi is a former chairman of the Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission, NEC, and we had him on the show trying to explain to us what is really going on and trying to profile some solutions. Unfortunately, we couldn't get him to the end of the segment, but we are thankful for him and to him. We will take a short break now when we return our second hot topic. We'll be next. Stay with us.