Nigeria’s Minister of Power, Adebayo Adelabu, has said over 10,000 megawatts of electricity are locked up in idle plants across the country despite the ongoing power shortage.
Speaking at the Nigeria Energy Conference in Lagos, Adelabu said Nigeria’s main problem was no longer generation but the inability to transmit and distribute available electricity.
He lamented that several government-owned power assets worth billions were lying unused while citizens and industries continued to suffer from poor electricity supply.
“In Nigeria today, we have over 10 gigawatts of stranded generation capacity. We have energy being generated or installed all over the country that we are not using,” he said.
He explained that the Aluminium Smelting Company in Akwa Ibom alone has six turbines of 90 megawatts each, totaling 540 megawatts, that have been idle for about 20 years due to a short transmission gap of less than four kilometres.
“Beside it is the Ibom Power Station, less than two kilometres away, with a regular gas supply. And we have been wasting these power-generating assets built with the funds and resources of this country,” he said.
Adelabu also cited the Port Harcourt Refinery, where an 84-megawatt thermal power plant is largely unutilised, with an additional potential of 120 megawatts that could be developed within the same facility.
“Port Harcourt Disco is complaining of lack of supply from the grid, yet there is a wasted asset sitting there,” he said.
The minister described the situation as a sign of national complacency and called on both federal and state governments to take decisive action.
“With the new Electricity Act of 2023, states can now generate, transmit, and distribute power. They must take the bull by the horn and light up their states,” he said.
Adelabu said his team would continue visiting stranded power sites nationwide to push for their reactivation and attract private investment.
He assured investors that the current policy direction supports long-term investment in the sector, adding that Nigeria has the potential to become a power hub in Africa if it fixes its transmission and distribution challenges.
