Murray-Bruce to President Tinubu: Decentralise power system in Nigeria

Former Senator Ben Murray-Bruce has called on President Bola Tinubu to pursue a more decentralised approach to electricity generation and distribution, arguing that Nigeria needs to reduce its reliance on the national grid and encourage community-based power solutions. Murray-Bruce made the proposal in an open letter to the President in which he examined challenges affecting electricity generation, transmission, distribution, metering and financing in the country. He cited data from the Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission, NERC, which he said showed a significant gap between Nigeria’s installed generation capacity and the amount of electricity available for dispatch.

According to him, the country had 13,625 megawatts of installed capacity in April, but only about 4,286MW was available for dispatch. He also referred to a decline in grid generation on August 22, when output, according to him, fell to about 1,132MW in the evening from more than 4,000MW earlier in the day. “These figures should make it clear that Nigeria’s electricity challenge is not simply about building more generating capacity.

We need to examine the entire structure of the sector, including how power is generated, transmitted, distributed, metered and paid for,” he said. The former senator criticised the outcome of the 2013 electricity-sector privatisation, arguing that the reform did not deliver the transformation Nigerians expected. “The 2013 privatisation was not the transformation Nigerians expected.

In my view, it largely amounted to a transfer of custody without ensuring that the new owners had the financial strength and technical capacity required to make the system work at the scale Nigeria needs,” he said. Murray-Bruce also highlighted the country’s metering gap, saying millions of active electricity customers remained without meters. He argued that estimated billing could make it difficult for consumers to monitor their electricity consumption and expenditure.

“A meter is a machine that tells the truth. An estimated bill is a machine that does not. If we want consumers to trust the electricity market, metering has to become a priority,” he said.

He proposed a model in which estates, communities and other local areas could develop their own electricity systems, particularly through solar generation, subject to appropriate financing and regulation.