THE Nigerian government has vowed to ramp up electricity supply, but it has been unable to utilise available power sector funds.
Data from the World Bank show that only 55.4 percent of the Nigerian population has access to electricity. Only 24.6 percent of the rural population has access to electricity.
A World Bank’s recent report on Nigeria’s power sector recovery programme also put the number of Nigerians without access to the grid electricity at 90 million. This places Nigeria as the highest in sub-Saharan Africa and second highest only after India.
The Nigerian government has also expressed interest in tackling the issues bedeviling the electricity sector of the country.
In 2022, the country’s electricity grid collapsed five times in six months, leading to a blackout on each occasion.
These developments may have informed the government’s decision to increase annual budgetary allocation to the power sector.
Between the three-year period of 2020 and 2022, the budget for the power sector grew by 129.42 percent, rising from N133.479 billion in 2020 to N306.23 billion in 2022.
This increase has also led to more budgetary allocation to capital expenditures for the sector. Capital expenditures are used for infrastructural development.
The capital expenditure budget grew from N128.005 billion to N299.965 billion between 2020 and 2022, representing a 134.338 percent increase.
Already, in 2023, the government has budgeted the sum of N258.494 billion to the power sector, with capital expenditure expected to gulp N251.609 billion.
A review of budget performance documents, however, shows that while there have been increases in budgets, the ministry has failed to utilise fully cash-backed allocations to it in the last three years.
In 2020 (September), of the N128.005 billion capital appropriation, N68.672 billion was released and cash-backed. However, only N44.224 billion was utilised out of the amount released, according to data from the Budget Office of the Federation. The rest was not utilised.
In 2021, of the N206.745 billion devoted to the capital expenditure, N164.307 billion was released and cash-backed. However, only N122.256 billion was utilised.
Also, in 2022, of the N296.637 billion appropriation, N144 billion was released, cash-backed, and utilised.
The non-utilisation of cash-backed funds for the power sector occurs despite statements credited to the Vice President, Yemi Osinbajo, that the country needed $410 billion to upgrade its power infrastructure.
The Director of the Center for Public Policy and Research, Prof Sam Amadi, blamed this development on a lack of proper budget planning by the ministry. He noted that the budget process needed to be efficient for actual implementation.
“If we have cases where there isn’t adequate planning for budgeted items, then the change we expect in the sector may not come.”
Amadi also hinged the bottlenecks in procurement on the need for more project expertise.
On the way forward, he called for adequate planning and budget procedures in the preparation of what the ministry needed and the eventual utilisation of resources, harping on the need for these standards as a way of ensuring that the power sector in the country got better.