Nigeria Falters as Ghana Achieves 88% Universal Electricity Access

Peter Uzoho

Nigeria’s electricity sector has continued underperforming resulting in the country lagging behind in the universal access to electricity when compared to Ghana, which has attained 88.54 per cent and still pushing to achieve 100 per cent by 2024.

Though far less in population with 34 million as against Nigeria’s over 200 million population, Ghana, Nigeria’s sister West African nation has been making a lot of conscious efforts through policy articulation and rapid implementation to continue growing its power sector for more investment and electricity access to the citizenry.

In his keynote presentation at the just-concluded Nigeria Energy Conference and Exhibition 2023 in Lagos, Minister of Energy, Ghana, Andrew Mercer, who presented the Ghana County Project Spotlight, said the country was on course to achieve universal access to electricity by the end of 2024 

“The president of Ghana emphasised the aggressive target of the government to achieve universal access by the end of 2024 from the current rate of 88.54 per cent.  

“This is consistent with the UN Sustainable Development Goal 7 (SDG7) which is to ‘ensure access to affordable, reliable and modern energy for all by 2030’ including universal access to electricity and clean cooking, “Mercer stated.

Currently, according to him, the total installed energy capacity in Ghana is 5,454 megawatts (mw) whereas dependable capacity stands at 4,843mw, with peak demand reaching 3,561mw in May 2023.

Conversely, Nigeria has a total installed generation capacity of 13,000mw, with a meagre 3,500 to 4,500mw managed to be transmitted and distributed to Nigerian homes and businesses.

The situation means that over 80 per cent of Nigerians still lack access grid to electricity as just about 11.27 million Nigerians are recorded as electricity customers as of Q1, 2023, according to the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS).

Ghana’s electricity grid has witnessed tremendous stability for years owing to constant effort by the government and relevant stakeholders to continue improving the nation’s electricity industry. This effort has ultimately improve the wellbeing of Ghanaians and enable businesses.

Just like Nigeria, the country has shifted more of its power generating to thermal sources, reducing the share of hydro power generation from 92 per cent between 2000 and 2015 to 28.9 per cent in 2023, while thermal rose to 68.5 per cent in 2023, even as renewable energy sources increased to 2.6 per cent.

Over 80 per cent of Nigeria’s power generation comes from the thermal plants, with its attendant high cost occasioned by foreign exchange components as payment for gas, equipment and expatriate employees are made in US dollars.

However, while Ghana boasts of its record power grid stability and less outages and blackouts, grid collapse has become a regular phenomenon in Nigeria, with the latest grid collapses occurring on 14 and 19 September 2023, barely one week when the Transmission Company of Nigeria (TCN) celebrated 421 days of grid stability.

The September 19 grid collapse started earlier morning when supply dropped from 3,594.60mw at about 1:00 am, while it slumped to a meagre 42.7mw

The incident was attributed to a fire at the Kainji/Jebba 330kV line 2, where two transmission transformers were lost, causing outage nationwide. 

According to records from the Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission (NERC), the number of grid collapse cases in Nigeria in 2018, 2019, 2020 and 2021 were 13, 11, four and four, respectively.

Industry data also showed that the electricity grid recorded about seven collapses in 2022, with the most recent grid collapse occurring on September 25, 2022, when power generation on the system crashed from over 3,700mw to as low as 38mw.

Nigeria’s power grid experienced the sixth collapse on July 20, 2022. There was a system collapse on June 13, two collapses in March and twice again in April in the year under review.