UPDATED: Nigeria’s partnership with Germany has led to improved electricity supply

Nigeria’s bilateral relationship with Germany has led to improved electricity supply in the West African country, an official said on Wednesday.

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The partnership involves the management of two transmission power substations by German electricity giant Siemens, Nigeria’s power minister Adebayo Adelabu told journalists in Abuja after a meeting between the presidents of Nigeria and Germany.

Mr Adelabu said the partnership involves “the installation and commissioning of 10 power transformers and 10 power mobile substations,” which has “added nothing less than 750 megawatts to our transmission grid capacity.”

Nigeria, Africa’s most populous country, suffers from acute electricity shortages with millions of residents having less than 10 hours of electricity daily.

Nigeria generates less than 7,000 megawatts of electricity for its over 200 million people and is unable to transmit all the power it generates. It hopes that the revitalisation of the grid will help improve its ability to transmit all the generated electricity.

Mr Adelabu said as part of the partnership, “Simiens is actually implementing the Brownfield and Greenfield transmission substations of the Presidential Power initiative.⁣”

He explained that since the signing of the agreement in Dubai at COP 28 last December, the country has made significant progress.

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“We have completed the pilot phase of this project, up to 80 per cent. The relative stability that we are seeing in the grid today is the direct positive impact of the pilot stage completion. ⁣

“And we believe that before the end of the year, an additional 150 megawatts capacity is going to be added upon completion of the entire pilot phase. And we are quite confident from the satisfaction that we got from the completion of the pilot stage,” he said.

He said once the phase one project in the transmission is done, there will be more improvement in electricity supply.

“That’s why we are telling Nigerians that this is a very old grid. It’s quite fragile and it’s dilapidating. We need to revamp the entire grid for us to be sure of stability going forward. That is the presidential power initiative,” he added.⁣

Speaking on the country’s hydroelectric power plants, Mr Adelabu said Nigeria has over 300 dams that have not been utilised because of poor access.

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“With the new road from Badagry to Sokoto, a lot of these dams will also be opened up. So we have so many opportunities and potentials on what we can do with Germany for us to achieve expanded energy access to our people going forward.”

Also speaking, President Bola Tinubu said: “We plan to strengthen the relationship and build partnership that is fulfilling and rewarding to the two countries, people to people relationship, and government to government facilitation of opportunities and prosperity.”

In his remarks, the German President, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, said Nigeria is Germany’s second largest trading partner in sub-Saharan Africa.

“So I’m happy and grateful that we took a lot of time to engage with one another. We promised each other that we both with our opportunities and the governments on both sides will do everything in our power to promote political and cultural ties and also promote and intensify People to People contacts,” he said.