ENERGY-NIGERIA: Power Cuts Leave Country in the Dark – And in the Grave

By Sam Olukoya Reprint | | Print |

Sam Olukoya

LAGOS, Mar 15 2005 (IPS) - Four days after moving into a new house in Sango Otta, a suburb of Nigeria’s commercial hub – Lagos – Soji Alawiye, his pregnant wife, two children and another family member died in their sleep. The cause of death: fumes from a portable generator that was left on overnight after a power cut.

Four days after moving into a new house in Sango Otta, a suburb of Nigeria’s commercial hub – Lagos – Soji Alawiye, his pregnant wife, two children and another family member died in their sleep. The cause of death: fumes from a portable generator that was left on overnight after a power cut.

In the same month, December 2004, generator fumes claimed another family – this time in the south-western town of Warri. Just a few weeks later a family of 10 in Ibadan, also in the south-west, died after leaving a generator on at night.

But, it wasn’t just an excessive dose of carbon monoxide that took a toll on the three families. They were also the victim of something else: the chronic inability of the state-owned electricity company, the National Electric Power Authority (NEPA), to meet Nigeria’s power needs.

The West African state’s daily power requirement is about 5,000 megawatts (MW). At most times, however, NEPA is barely able to generate 2,000 MW, prompting exasperated Nigerians to give the utility another name: Never Expect Power Always.

Another consequence of NEPA’s failure to supply enough electricity is that Nigeria has become one of the world’s biggest buyers of stand-by generators.

"We have no choice but to rely on generators, because sometimes we may not have electricity here for a month or three weeks," Yekini Adigun, who lives a few blocks from Alawiye’s house, told IPS.

The widespread need for generators also means that those lucky enough to have the machines dare not leave them outside overnight, as they risk being stolen.

But, faced with hot weather and frequent humidity, many Nigerians find the prospect of a night without the breeze of electric fans unbearable. As a result, some leave their generators on indoors – despite the fact that they risk death through inhalation of fumes.

While it may not be on a par with the loss of life, the inconvenience of erratic power supplies also extends to business.

"My family sells frozen foods like turkey, fish and chicken. When there is no power, we incur loses because we don’t have heavy capacity generators to run freezers that can preserve them," says Adigun.

The National Association of Chambers of Commerce, Industry, Mines and Agriculture and the Manufacturers’ Association of Nigeria (MAN) put the annual losses of their members as a result of power cuts at about a billion dollars.

These costs – and the expense of investing in generators to make up the power shortfalls – get passed on to the consumer. MAN said recently that the price of goods may have to go up by as much as 20 percent to compensate for high energy costs.

As with many of the Nigeria’s ills, NEPA’s poor performance results in large measure from years of corrupt military rule which left the country’s public utilities in a state of decay – their facilities aging, fragile and overstretched.

Despite being the world’s sixth largest oil exporter, for example, Nigeria currently has to import petrol because its four refineries are not functioning properly.

When President Olusegun Obasanjo came to power in May 1999, ending almost 16 years of military rule, he promised to overhaul NEPA. And, more than a billion dollars has been spent in an effort to revamp the company.

However, Nigerians complain that these funds have been diverted in much the same way as happened under military rule – and that power supplies have barely improved.

"Nothing has come from the huge money spent on power generation in the last years. The money has gone into the corrupt system," says Tive Denedo, head of the Lagos-based Renewable Energy Centre, a body that works for improved energy provision in Nigeria.

"People without any visible means of livelihood have become millionaires. The money has gone into private pockets," he adds. "If the money was well utilized there would have been sufficient electricity."

NEPA insists that all the money it received has been judiciously spent – on the construction of new power plants, the rehabilitation of old ones and the establishment of new transmission networks.

"In our determined efforts to boost existing generation capacity, government has commenced the building of three new thermal power stations. On completion, they will add 1,300 MW to the national grid," NEPA’s chief executive, Joseph Makoju, said in a statement to consumers.

The utility blames part of the ongoing energy crunch on theft of equipment, and vandalism – which it claims accounts for almost a third of blackouts experienced in Nigeria.

Last week, Obasanjo also signed into law the Electric Power Sector Reform Bill, which allows the privatizing of electricity generation – until now a state monopoly.

Some fear that this will lead to spiraling power costs. But, others argue that privatisation could not possibly be worse than what the country is already grappling with.

Higher electricity charges, they say, will amount to less than what Nigerians are currently paying to run their private generators.