Amid the ongoing protests and palliatives discoveries, the Federal Republic of Nigeria is considering supplying electricity to the Republic of Chad.
This consideration by the Nigerian government started after Chad, Nigeria’s neighbor requested for it. Although, the request was first made on June 22, 2020, but it’s only being considered.
Transmission Company of Nigeria, a company owned by the Nigerian government, made this announcement on Sunday. They disclosed that a meeting was held last week to discuss the possibilities of connecting Chad to the national grid.
Nigeria, whose available power generation has been hovering between 3,000 megawatts and 4,500MW in recent years is currently exporting electricity to three neighboring countries including Republics of Niger, Benin and Togo.
Although, one would think that a country in a position to supply electricity to other countries would have a stronger supply of electricity within the country.
Total power generation in the country fell to 3,474.5MW as of 6am on Sunday from 3,776.5MW on Saturday, according to data obtained from the Nigerian Electricity System Operator. The number of plants on the national grid that did not produce any megawatts of electricity rose to 11 as of 6am on Sunday from eight on Saturday. The idle plants were Geregu II, Sapele II, Alaoji, Olorunsogo II, Omotosho II, Ihovbor, Gbarain, Ibom Power, AES, ASCO and Trans-Amadi.
Twenty-seven plants are currently connected to the national grid, which is being managed by the TCN.
When TCN tweeted about the consideration of supplying chad with electricity, they were met with negative reactions.
“We have not had power for six days now and you want to connect another country to the small one we are managing. You people should borrow yourself sense o,” said a twitter user. And another Twitter user said, “Don’t tweet this because it is a bad idea. You don’t give what you don’t have.”
