Beyond Copper and Steel: Is Data the Missing Link in Nigeria’s Power Grid Puzzle

Oluchi Chibuzor

For years, the solution to Nigeria’s power problem has been framed in terms of megawatts and kilometers of transmission lines. While new power plants and substations are essential, a new school of thought is emerging among the country’s brightest young engineers. They argue that without a fundamental shift in strategy, we risk building a bigger, more expensive, yet equally unstable grid.

The core of their argument is that the grid’s instability is no longer just a hardware problem, but a data and complexity problem. As new, intermittent sources like solar and high-capacity transformers are added, the risk of system-wide failures increases exponentially. The missing link, they propose, is predictive data analysis.

We spoke with Engr Oluwabunmi Akomolafe, a power systems engineer who recently joined the Federal workforce after graduating with top honors. She is a vocal advocate for a “simulation-first” approach to grid development.

“We cannot afford to discover problems after a project is already live; we must find them before a single brick is laid,” she stated during an online technical workshop. “The technology now exists to build a complete ‘digital twin’ of our national grid. In this virtual environment, we can model the dynamic impact of a new power plant or a new transmission line. We can simulate a thousand different failure scenarios and teach the system how to respond before it ever carries a single watt of live electricity.”

This idea of using data to predict and neutralize grid instability before it happens is a significant departure from traditional engineering practices in the country. It suggests that the future of grid management will rely as much on data scientists and software modeling as it does on field engineers.

While still a nascent concept in the Nigerian context, this focus on data-driven foresight may hold the key to unlocking a stable and reliable energy future for the nation. Industry watchers are now waiting to see if major stakeholders will embrace such innovative—and vital—new thinking.