Power Supply to Nigerian Households Remains Poor- Reports

John Okoh, Lagos

New aggregated power poll results released by NOIPolls for the first half of 2017 January to June, covering first and second quarter, reveal a decline in power supply to Nigerian households.

The report shows that an average of 31 percent of Nigerians surveyed reported the decline in power supply for the first half of this year; this drop represented a 6-point decline when compared to the fourth quarter of 2016 which stood at 37 percent.

According to the report, the drop could be attributed to the reported shortage of gas supply experienced by the sector several months back and the grid instability caused by weak transmission infrastructure.

Quarterly evaluation revealed that 31 percent of adult Nigerians reported that they experienced a minimal increase in power supply to their households in second quarter of 2017 and this represents a 1-point increase when compared to first quarter of 2017, which stood at 30 percent.

Also, monthly analysis has shown that the highest improvement in power supply was in the month of March 2017 with 35 percent representation while the month of January accounted for the lowest 21 percent improvement in power supply in the first half of 2017.

In the same manner, an evaluation of the monthly average cumulative hours of power supply to Nigerian households for the month of February 2017 stood at 9.8 hours daily, representing the highest daily cumulative hours of power supply within the six month period.

Quarterly, nationwide average daily cumulative power supply to Nigerian households in second quarter of 2017 stood at 9.3 hours.

The results further stressed the drop in power supply when compared to fourth quarter of 2016 which had 10.6 hours as the monthly average.

This infers that the stakeholders in the power sector need to keep up the pace of working towards providing more quality electricity supply to the people.