Nigeria’s electricity supply could face further disruptions unless the Federal Government addresses mounting debts in the power sector, inadequate investment in gas production and weak infrastructure, industry stakeholders have warned.
The stakeholders said the absence of a reliable payment system for gas suppliers was affecting electricity generation. They also identified inadequate transmission infrastructure and poor commercial arrangements as obstacles to improving power supply.
They raised the concerns at the sixth annual conference of the Power Correspondents Association of Nigeria in Abuja, where they discussed challenges threatening the country’s ambition to achieve a $1tn economy by 2030. The warning comes amid recent electricity disruptions linked to inadequate gas supply to thermal power plants and reduced water inflows into hydroelectric reservoirs.
General Manager, Gas Commercial, Nigerian National Petroleum Development Company, Bashiru Adoke, said the crisis could be addressed through sustained investment and a reliable payment structure. He explained that power generation companies receive insufficient payments for electricity supplied, making it difficult for them to settle gas invoices.
Adoke said the power market owed gas suppliers more than ₦630bn for electricity generated and consumed. He noted that gas accounts for between 60 and 75 per cent of production costs, while payments received by generation companies cover only about 40 per cent of their energy invoices.
He warned that government interventions to settle debts accumulated between 2015 and 2025 would not prevent new liabilities from building up. Adoke also called for more investment in non-associated gas to reduce dependence on gas produced alongside crude oil, adding that high electricity tariffs could push consumers towards solar power and threaten the national grid.
Meanwhile, General Manager, Engineering, Transmission Company of Nigeria, Mojeed Akintola, said inadequate generation remained a major constraint because the company could only transmit electricity produced by power stations. He said TCN was expanding its capacity through new transformers and transmission lines but faced delays caused by right-of-way disputes and vandalism.
