CHAPTER ONE
1.1 INTRODUCTION
Nigeria
is a country with a population of over 170 million; it is rightly the most
populous country in Africa and the eighth most populous country in the world.
According to the United Nations, one in six Africans is Nigerian. It is a
regional power, listed among the “Next Eleven” economies, and a member of the
Commonwealth of Nations. Nigeria’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) was revised in
2013. As a consequence of the re-basing, the estimate for Nigeria’s
GDP
in 2013 was revised upward from 42.4 trillion Naira to 80.2trillion Naira ($500
billion), an 89% increase. But for over two decades, Nigeria has experienced
problems in the area of electricity generation, transmission and distribution.
The extent of this is underlined by the fact that Nigeria is the largest
purchaser of standby electricity generating plants in the world. (Braimoh and
Okedeyi 2010). The population growth rate is projected to be between 2.5 and
2.7% per annum in the next 20 years. The population of Nigeria is therefore
forecast to potentially grow to 310 million by 2035.
From
the forgoing, we could say, in informal terms, that Nigeria is beginning to
have an impressive resume when it comes to population and economical growth.
But has this growth been reflected in the electric power sector of Nigeria?
Well to answer that, let’s take a look at the data gathered by the IEA showing
the electricity generation in (GWH) in Nigeria and compare this with her peer
developing economies like India and South Africa for the past twenty years.
Fig1.0
Electricity generation (GWH) in Nigeria since 1992
The
figure above shows the historic development of electricity generation in
Nigeria and of the prior mentioned peer countries. It can be observed that
Nigeria performed worst of the five countries in terms of absolute electricity
generation. Over a 20 year period, there was an increase of 93% in mainline
generating capacity in Nigeria. By contrast, Indonesia ramped up its
electricity production by 372% and Bangladesh even by 451%. As a result,
Bangladesh generated almost twice as much electrical energy in 2012 as Nigeria
did. From this, we can see a need for us Nigerians especially us in the
electrical engineering field to explore alternative cutting edge technology in
the power sector for efficient service delivery. But what could be said about
the Nigerian power sector, how was the power sector operated so that this poor
result was a consistent reoccurrence? Let’s take a brief walk into time to
understand the Nigerian power sector before Privatization and probably get to
see why the power institution was in serious want.