Engr. Ifesie Ikechukwu Boniface is the Chief Executive Officer, Power System and Automation Solutions Limited. In this interview with Francis Kadiri, he charges the Federal Government to increase Nigeria’s power generation and transmission capacity in order to make the economy viable and pave the way for national industrial development.
Despite huge resources committed to improving power supply by successive administrations, Nigeria still suffers serious power outage. Why is this so?
Government needs to know the real factors that must be considered when building power plants. The capital requirement is huge. For example, you need about $1million to build a plant that will generate one megawatt of electricity. Apart from this, Nigeria’s current installed generation capacity is nothing to write home about. It stands, at present, at about 7,333megawatts. This installed capacity is too low to drive the country’s industrial growth.
Any nation that sincerely desires industrial growth must strengthen its power sector because companies need power to run their factories of production. We need power in excess of 100,000megawatts if we really aspire for industrial growth.
I think the power sector was prematurely privatised and we are now facing the consequences. Now, the task of power generation is in the hands of private investors, yet government continues to set targets for the country in terms of how many megawatts Nigeria will generate in the near future
Comparing Nigeria to other countries of the world, do you think we are really doing badly in terms of power generation?
Let me give you instances. South Africa, which has a population of about 50million people, has an installed capacity of 52,000 megawatts. The population of Turkey is about 82million and the country has an installed capacity of 92,000 megawatts. The US, with a population of about 300million people, has an installed capacity of over 1.5million megawatts. Nigeria, with a population about 200 million people, has installed capacity of only 7,000 megawatts. I hope this makes it obvious for anyone to see that Nigeria is in alarming deficit of power generation and transmission capacity, a situation that is seriously retarding the growth of the industrial
sector.
However, despite Nigeria’s very poor installed power generation capacity, we are not even able to distribute the inadequate power we manage to generate with the power generation companies having lots of idle machines. This is because of lack of power evacuation and distribution capacity. This is a major problem, which when solved, will usher the country into another problem of poor power infrastructure.
It is important to note that there is so much suppressed load at the distribution end, which is far in excess of the present generation capacity, yet there are machines lying idle at generation stations because of power evacuation and distribution capacities.
Some people are of the view that some of the companies that executed the earliest NIPP projects lacked the required expertise, and in some cases, the contracts were revoked. What is your view?
Some of the challenges are not about whether the handlers were indigenous engineers or not. Remember that President Olusegun Obasanjo’s administration conceived the NIPP when he went to commission the Omoku Power Plant built by the Rivers State Government at the time. President Obasanjo reasoned that if a state government could successfully boost its power generation, then the Federal Government should do even more.
However, President Obasanjo was in haste because he wanted to execute the projects before his tenure expired. As a result, proper feasibility studies were not conducted before the commencement of the projects; some of the lands for the project sites were not properly acquired and you may be aware that some contractors could not initiate project execution because of unavailability of project sites.
The NIPP probe dealt another big blow to the projects because the probe happened at the middle of the NIPP project execution; it stopped the project for two years and caused a lot of delays, which later resulted in huge additional costs in the form of variation. To be frank with you, some contractors never recovered from the losses.
How were some companies able to overcome the challenges?
Not all projects had problems, some had lands and they did not suffer any delay, and so they had smooth initiation and execution of their projects. Another thing to note is that contractors have different approaches to project execution. Companies that had good management teams were able to foresee problems and they averted them, those who could not foresee problems ran into challenges.
I told you that our project was among the last to be awarded, but it was among the first to be commissioned. Imagine that a project that was awarded in 2009 was completed and commissioned in 2010, while the project awarded in 2006 remained uncompleted. Ours was a remarkably big project involving the entire rehabilitation of Sapele Power plant switchyard, which was built in 1978 that has so many steam and gas turbine bays with lines linking Alaja, Benin and other parts. We executed the rehabilitation and extension within one year and got it commissioned.
Would you say that privatising the power sector improved service delivery?
No, I would not say so. I think the power sector was prematurely privatised and we are now facing the consequences. Now, the task of power generation is in the hands of private investors, yet government continues to set targets for the country in terms of how many megawatts Nigeria will generate in the near future, and it is not in the business of power generation. It is like paying lip service because government is not responsible for power generation and cannot decide the pace for private sector investors. The fact that Nigeria’s installed capacity is 7,000 megawatts shows that the sector needs more investors.
Why are investors too nervous to invest in power distribution?
Apart from the huge capital intensiveness of power projects, Nigeria’s political instability poses serious threat to prospective investors. The country’s security challenge is another factor inhibiting the willingness of investors. The poor evacuation and distribution capacity is also another major factor.
Investors are afraid of investing in power generation because the country’s installation capacity is not guaranteed. A point of note is that every stage in power sector business involves very huge investment. So no investor is willing to spend funds generating power that cannot be evacuated.
What motivated you to establish the company?
The major inspiration that led to the establishment of Power Systems and Automation Solutions Limited is the quest to fill the gap that exists in the Nigerian power sector, and we have been able to make significant contributions to the sector.
As a private sector organisation, how has your organisation impacted the Nigerian power sector?
We have been involved in the design and construction of remarkable power plant switchyards and transmission systems. We have several signature projects that remain sources of pride to us. The rehabilitation and extension of 330kVSapelePower Plant Switchyard is a project that stands as a signature of our professional competence. The project was one of the last projects of the National Integrated Power Project to be awarded in 2009, but it was the first to be commissioned in 2010.
In conjunction with our foreign technical partners, we successfully executed the extension of Katampe 1 x150MVA, 330/132 KV substation, Mando
1 x 150MVA, 330/132/33 KV substation extension. In Central Area, Abuja, we extended 1x 60MVA, 132/33kV substation. We extended the existing Ikeja West Transmission station by adding a 1×150 MVA 330/132KV transformer.
We also extended the substation in Ojo by adding 2x60MVA, 132/33 KV substation and at Agbara by 1 x 60 MVA 132/33 KV.
In Jos, we executed 150MVA, 330/132KV Substation extension and the Makurdi 132KVA substation extension. We also constructed the Kaduna
green field Power plant 132KV switchyard, which is awaiting commissioning presently; the Alaoji1x300MVA 330/132 KV substation extension has been completed and
will soon be
commissioned.
Now, we are working on the automated meter reading and meter data management across all power transmission stations in Nigeria. When this project is completed, it will improve transparency in the Nigerian electricity
market.
