Nigeria’s power supply has worsened this week as gas shortages at thermal plants and low water inflows into hydro dams cut generation, according to the Nigerian Independent System Operator (NISO). The Federal Government acknowledged the disruptions on Thursday 5 November, with outages reported in Lagos, Ogun, Kwara and Oyo states and the FCT. The Power Minister’s office says preliminary checks found no major or systemic grid failure, and blames maintenance and operational issues on top of the gas and water constraints. Reported generation sat between 3,659MW and 3,688.95MW.
NISO’s allocation figures show who is getting what. As of 4:41pm on Thursday it had allocated 2,926MW to the 11 distribution companies, and these are load allocations, not confirmed deliveries. Abuja got the most at 633MW, followed by Ibadan at 391MW, Port Harcourt at 320MW, Benin at 264MW, Eko at 256MW, Enugu at 253MW and Ikeja at 249MW. Kano got 173MW, Kaduna 167MW, Jos 146MW and Yola 74MW. Eko and Ikeja, the two DisCos covering Lagos, got 505MW between them, which is less than Abuja alone.
On the generation side, Azura-Edo IPP was the largest single contributor at 437MW, followed by Okpai at 421MW, Delta at 334MW and Afam VI at 320MW. The hydro plants carried a lot of the load, with Shiroro at 295.9MW, Jebba at 245MW, Kainji at 214MW and Zungeru at 160MW. Egbin, the Lagos plant, was putting out 111MW.
Power Minister Joseph Tegbe said the government recognises what every hour without power means and is working with TCN, NISO and the DisCos to restore normal supply. Separately, after a Federal Executive Council directive from President Tinubu, 44 containers of power equipment were released from Apapa Port in Lagos. More than 300 containers had been stranded there, some since 2014, and technical experts will inspect the contents before anything is deployed.
