It appears sheer magic – that pledge by the Lagos State government to increase electricity to the state from under 1 000 mw now to 3 000 mw by March 2027. It is already October 2026. So that means in less than six months!
Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu speaking through his Deputy Obafemi Hamzat gave this commitment at the 4th Lagos Business School Africa Energy Conference.
Speaking on the topic: ‘Securing Nigeria’s Energy Future: Policy Reform Capital Mobilisation and Pathways to a Sustainable Power and Energy Market’ the governor said the goal was to embed 24 hours uninterrupted electricity.
It’s backed by a seven-point strategy: market functionality boosted generation a reinforced transmission infrastructure and a distribution capacity upgrade.
The remaining three: expanded metering a more secure gas-to-power supply and deploying along the power generation-transmission-distribution chain state-of-the-art IT monitoring systems including SCADA – Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition – the brain box that monitors and gathers realtime data on both industry software and hardware.
Other technological upgrades are the Advanced Metering Infrastructure (AMI) the Lagos State Electricity Intelligence Platform (LEIP) and a change in policy to power schools and streetlights by solar away from diesel plants.
This is clearly the Lagos State Electricity Regulatory Commission (LASERC) per the Lagos State Electricity Law 2024 taking full charge of its market district vide the Federal Power Sector Reforms that federalised electricity per the Electricity Act 2023.
Indeed in May LASERC had outed with strategies to rev up supply off the national grid from independent power plants. Three of those plants are the Mainland Power Ltd Fenchurch Power Ltd and Viathan Engineering Ltd. All three should jack up their combined power supply from 60 mw to 400 mw in three years (2026-2029).
As at that time too LASERC was negotiating power-trading deals with the following: Isolo Power Supply Ltd Isolo Power Generation Ltd GossLink Ltd (with three licences) Daybreak Ltd (with six licences) Enaro Energy MiniGrid Ltd and New Hemisphere Capital Ltd.
Add these independent plants to the two current vendors from the national grid: Ikeja Electric Plc and Eko Distribution Company Plc and what you see is a fully liberalised Lagos electricity market teeming with different players that could well be vendors to their immediate communities and environs.
Might this putative constellation of players have boosted this new pledge of a massive intrusion: less than 1 000 mw to more than 3 000 mw in less than six months? An expectant market certainly would hope LASERC got its numbers right! It certainly must have before the governor could make that very ambitious goal public.
While the market waits for LASERC to walk its talk the regulatory agency couldn’t be more right on the imperative for mass metering. Indeed metering has always been prominent in its focus – as it should be.
That’s the near-sole guarantor that power investors will get their nourishment as and when due. This is aside from assuring customers – households industries schools hospitals and general government agencies – that they are not being ripped off.
Indeed there’s still a huge gap in metering. By numbers from the Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission (NERC) just released 4.7 million homes are still unmetered.
But for Lagos its two DisCos aren’t doing badly – in comparative terms. With 89.64% Eko DisCo led the metering charge for August followed by I.E. with 87.74%. Still these are comparisons with metering laggards nationwide. The absolute numbers are still rather poor.
So to make its bid a success LASERC must maintain its 100% focus on metering. That would make it easier for it to achieve its 24-hour electricity target.
From less than 1 000 mw to more than 3 000 mw in six months is nothing less than audacious. But even that would supply only a quarter of the 12 000 mw LASERC itself had said Lagos needed.
But with right investments and effective regulations the goal is achievable. LASERC more than anyone has its work well cut out. We can only wish the body well.