Power, illustration

 

 All appears not well with the Nigerian power sector as strong indications have shown it’s now heading for the rocks. Recent developments in the sector suggest the blame game among players in the electricity value chain have intensified in the last few weeks, leaving hapless consumers to bear the brunt. Amidst the rhetoric displayed by industry players, consumers appear left in the cold with no one listening to their complaints even as per kilo watt hour of electricity consumption of households and industries continue to dwindle by the day. Last week for instance, the national electricity grid collapsed twice in 24 hours, throwing most part of the country into darkness. Prior to the grid collapse, there were massive loading shedding nationwide following very low power generation by the Generation Companies (Gencos) for the Transmission Company of Nigeria (TCN) to wheel through its grid to distribution companies nationwide at a time 14 power plants were idle. The initial collapse which occurred last Monday at 10.40am was followed by another on Tuesday that led to outages across the DisCos network, causing a shut out of 600MW from Africa’s largest power plant in Egbin, Lagos