A former Minister of Power, Professor Barth Nnaji, has stated that Nigeria needs at least, available 100,000 megawatts of electricity to meet its energy needs.

This is just as he decried that the country’s power sector remained structurally weak, financially unsustainable, and far behind the real energy demands of its population and industries.

According to him, this poor power infrastructure is grossly inadequate and incapable of supporting meaningful national economic growth.

The former minister in a televised interview monitored in Lagos yesterday said: “My number, which I continue to say anywhere, is that we need at least 100,000 megawatts of power here to be available, not just merely installed, to be able to serve this country.”

Nnaji, who also is Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Geometric Power Group, warned that the nation’s current transmission infrastructure cannot carry anything close to the volume required.

According to him, it is necessary to urgently upgrade power infrastructure across generation, transmission, and distribution value chain.

He said: “Financing-wise, the federal government needs to rethink what we had established earlier, which was a kind of guarantee instrument that will ensure that investors in power are able to invest in power generation, wherever, whichever method, whether it is solar, whether it is natural gas, whether it is hydro, to supply to DISCOs.

“Achieving this goal requires aggressive power generation, infrastructure upgrades, strategic investment, and a balanced adoption of renewable energy. Failure to make such investments will only prolong issues like load shedding.

“Distribution companies must invest in substations to ensure efficient power distribution. Without such investments, the country will continue to experience load shedding.”