The Federal Government on Wednesday in Abuja said it has paid N1.23tn out of the N3.3tn debt owed to electricity generation companies.
The Minister of Power, Joshua Tegbe, made the disclosure while briefing State House correspondents after the Federal Executive Council meeting presided over by President Bola Tinubu at the State House, Abuja.
He revealed that President Tinubu also ordered the clearance of 300 containers of power equipment lying abandoned at several ports nationwide, some for as long as 20 years.
“As we work on stabilising the grid, we are also addressing liquidity and debt issues in the sector. So far, we have been able to pay N1.23tn out of the N3.3tn debts owed to the GenCos, which has been considered a challenge in respect of the supply of feedstock gas.
As we continue to do this, in addition to this, we continue to optimise the assets that we have in the sector. Hence, we plan to build resilience into the grid by building out and investing in grid expansion. The intention is to be able to upgrade our transmission capacity, to be able to up again from 5,000-megawatt transmission wheeling capacity today to about 19,000 megawatts,” he explained.
Tegbe revealed that the council also approved three transmission infrastructure projects, the first being the commencement of construction of a three double-circuit underground and overhead line at the Katampe Transmission Substation in Abuja, which he described as a major hub for the North Central region.
Tegbe noted that the 300 MVA transformers were not off-the-shelf equipment and had to be custom-manufactured, taking between three and six months to produce.
“Everybody in the world is competing for transformers today. Because of the demand of AI and data, even America has just identified a 359-gigawatt gap. Elon Musk and other power sector players in America have ordered more than half of the transformers being produced across the world. We have to take the cue to ensure that we are in line,” he said.
The third memo was to reconstruct and upgrade the 35.6km McPherson–Shagamu 132kV single-circuit line to a double-circuit line to increase load-carrying capacity along the Lagos–Shagamu axis.
Tegbe told journalists that a technical audit of the entire national power infrastructure was underway, with the country divided into three major energy zones: the Lagos–Ibadan axis, which accounts for about 50 per cent of national power demand; the Abuja–Kaduna–Karu zone; and the Benue–Enugu–Port Harcourt corridor.
He explained, “We have also set up a technical audit of the entire infrastructure across the country with respect to the power sector. In the course of doing that, we have designated the country into three major energy zones: Lagos, Como Axis, where about 50 per cent of the demand for power in this country comes from.
“We also have a second major energy zone, which is Abuja-Kaduna-Karu-Zone, and then the third one is Benue-Enugu-Port Harcourt. We are conducting an audit in those three energy zones.
“We’ve gone four weeks into the audit, and as we progress, the intention is to replace some of our ageing infrastructure and enhance the resilience of the transmission infrastructure in those areas.”