The Minister of Power, Chief Adebayo Adelabu, emphasized the need to restore confidence in Nigeria’s central power supply as industries increasingly shift to alternative energy sources.
Adelabu disclosed this in a statement during the commissioning of training equipment and simulation infrastructure for power distribution capacity development, built by the National Power Training Institute of Nigeria with support from the Japan International Cooperation Agency in Abuja.
Adelabu stressed the importance of developing local expertise to manage foreign exchange and enhance human capacity for resource management.
“He also emphasised the need for the power sector to restore the confidence of the consumers, particularly the industrial sector on the reliability of the grid, which is cheaper than the captive, embedded, and the renewable power supply,” a statement by the minister’s spokesman, Bolaji Tunji, stated.
He further said “We have provided access to over 150 million Nigerians through the grid and renewable supply to the rural populace but we still have over 80 million Nigerians that we still need to provide power for.
“This formed one of our discussions at the just concluded meeting of African heads of States in Dar es Salam in Tanzania, which was organised by the World Bank and the African Development (AfDB), where it was agreed that 300 million Africans must be provided with electricity by the year 2030.
“But the question is; why are people and particularly, industries focusing on captive and embedded power supply? The answer is that our grid is still a work in progress that we are building to ensure its reliability, even though these alternative sources are more expensive. We must begin to do something about this and bring our industries back to our grid,” Adelabu said.
He urged stakeholders in the power sector, including generation, transmission, and distribution companies, to utilize the new facility for staff training.
““I want to emphasise that there is a need for intense training of manpower in the sector. Electricity Company of Nigeria (ECN), the National Electricity Power Authority (NEPA) and the Power Holding Company (PHCN) all realised this. These agencies, even though they had their shortcomings and we have found ourselves where we are today, they took training very seriously.
“They focused on training and what we are witnessing here is one of their investments. About 80 per cent of the workforce came from them. Generation, transmission and distribution losses can be drastically reduced through constant training and retraining of the workforce in these modern facilities.
“With access to modern simulation tool sets, we believe our workforce will engage in hands-on, practical learning experiences that mirror real-world scenarios. This will undoubtedly enhance local competency and confidence in managing complex power systems and reacting effectively to any challenges that may arise,” he noted.
