Q4, 2019: Power Supply To Nigerian Households Still Inadequate – Report

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In this Tuesday, Aug. 24, 2010 photo, Esther Jacob sells cassava flour by lantern light in Lagos, Nigeria. Nigeria's president announced a multi-billion-dollar plan Thursday to repair and privatize the oil-rich nation's decrepit national power grid that forces people to rely on private generators to provide electricity. (AP Photo/Sunday Alamba)

Abuja, Nigeria. January, 14th 2020 – The new power poll released by NOIPolls for the fourth quarter (Q4) of 2019 has revealed that power supply to Nigerian households experienced a marginal increase to stand at 37 percent in Q4 from 36 percent obtained in Q3, 2019. A quarterly trend analysis of power supply in 2019 shows that the highest improvement in power supply was in Q1 and Q4, 2019 while the lowest supply occurred in Q2, 2019 as expressed by Nigerians interviewed. Also, a monthly trend analysis of power supply in 2019 revealed that the month of January 2019 had the highest power supply while the lowest power supply was experienced in April 2019 as indicated by 46 percent and 28 percent of Nigerians respectively. It is also worthy to note that the current transmission capacity and network operational capacities are 7,000 Mega Watts (MW) and 5,500 MW respectively, however, the peak generation ever attained in Nigeria in 2019 is 5,222.3 MW.

Further findings revealed that the highest average cumulative hours of power supply were recorded in the month of January 2019 which stood at 10.2 hours per day whereas, the month of April experienced the lowest in terms of average cumulative hours of power supply (9.0 hours per day) in 2019. This cumulative hourly average recorded in January 2019 is inadequate when compared to an ideal 24 hours of power supply which is required for the overall progress and development of the country and its citizenry.

Therefore, to drastically improve on the status quo on the electricity sector, experts in this sector needs to identify more efficient means of electricity generation. For instance, the use of embedded generation will help eliminate the long-distance the power travel to get to the end-user and will ultimately improve the supply of electricity. It is therefore advised that Government and stakeholders in the power sector synergize to provide adequate power supply. This is important because the decline in power supply will continue to hampered economic activities, especially of businesses whose operation depends majorly on power supply. These are some of the key findings from the power poll conducted by NOIPolls in Q4, 2019.

Quarterly Trend on Power Supply

Quarterly analysis indicated that a larger proportion of Nigerians in Q1 and Q4, 2019 (37 percent each) reported that they experienced better power supply to their respective households than in Q2, 2019 (31 percent).

Quarterly Average Daily Cumulative Power Supply to Nigerian Households

Furthermore, on a quarter-on-quarter basis, the average hours of cumulative power supply to Nigerian households in Q1 and Q3, 2019 were 9.6 hours each respectively, this was the highest recorded hours when compared to the 9.2 hours obtained in Q2, 2019.

Monthly Trend on Power Supply

Monthly analysis of power supply to Nigerian households from September to December 2019 revealed a steady increase as depicted in the chart below. The poll findings also showed that Nigerians experienced more power supply to their households in January (46 percent) and December (40 percent) 2019 than any other month in review.

Monthly Daily Cumulative Hours of Power Supply to Nigerian Households

Subsequently, analysis of the poll result revealed that the month of January 2019 recorded the highest(10.2) daily cumulative hours of power supply to Nigerian households while the lowest (9 hours) was the month of April 2019.

Yearly Trend on Power Supply

A four years trend analysis revealed that Nigerians experienced worse power supply in 2019 (35 percent) when compared 20018, 2017 and 2016 respectively.

Yearly Cumulative Hours of Power Supply Daily

Yearly cumulative power supply revealed that 2017 (9.7 hours) has the highest average cumulative hourly power supply in the last four years when compared to 2019 and 2018. However, the lowest in the last four years was recorded in 2016 with an average of 8.6 hours per day.