By Udeme Akpan, Johnbosco Agbakwuru &  Mariam Eko

Nigeria’s power generation  has increased by 30% to  5,801.84MW, even as the Transmission Company of Nigeria, TCN, yesterday, said its Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition, SCADA, system, designed for monitoring and controlling field devices, is currently 69 percent completed. It aims to eventually use the facility to enhance the management and control of the national power infrastructure, enabling prompt responses to outages and efficient load management.

Managing Director of TCN, Engr. Sule Abdulaziz, stated this while briefing State House correspondents on the activities of his office.

Abdulaziz said once SCADA is completed, the company will have the capacity to conduct real-time monitoring of the power grid and prevent further vandalism of power lines across Nigeria.

He stated: “From our work program, in six months’ times, we are going to finish SCADA. I mentioned that it is 69 per cent completed, and this project is funded by the World Bank.

“The World Bank was funding NETAP. In that NETAP, we have $486 million. It is out of it that we are doing the SCADA. By the time we have that SCADA completed, we will be able to see in real time whatever is happening on the grid.

“We are going to finish it. It’s not up to a month since we visited the place they are putting in the Gwagwalada in our new substation. We paid a visit there with the people from the World Bank, and the project is going well. Most of the equipment is installed. So by six months, we are going to have SCADA in our grid.”

The TCN boss announced a distribution target of 10,000 megawatts of electricity in the next two years, if produced by the generation companies, GENCOS.

He added: “For the first time in our nation’s history, the power sector recorded a new and unprecedented peak generation of 5,801.84 megawatts of electricity on March 4, 2025, at 21:15 hours. The Transmission Company of Nigeria (TCN) efficiently evacuated this bulk power to distribution load centers nationwide.

“With the numerous TCN transmission projects completed in the last two years and new ones currently underway as well as the 8,500MW current evacuation capability of the company, I can confidently state that in less than two years from now, the Transmission Company of Nigeria will conveniently evacuate 10,000 megawatts of generated power.”

Despite having the infrastructure to generate 13,000 MW of electricity, only a third of that has typically reached consumers through an aging grid that covers roughly half the nation, forcing businesses and households to rely on costly generators.

According to Reuters, the TCN boss said the government owned company has commissioned 66 new power transformers and built new substations and transmission lines.

He was quoted to have said, “We increased the capacity of existing substations and built new ones.”

A 2019 agreement with Siemens  to rehabilitate transmission lines and power distribution substations, funded by German banks, aimed to achieve 7,000 MW of reliable power by 2021 and 11,000 MW by 2023. However, it has faced regulatory, logistical and financing challenges.

In a pilot phase, six projects added an additional 335 MW of capacity and when the next phase is completed, 15 brownfield power substations will have been rehabilitated and 22 Greenfield substations built up. Grid improvements are also being supported by government funding and multilateral organisations like the World Bank and African Development Bank.

The government secured $1.1 billion from the AfDB in January for the power sector and has announced a separate $192 million, five-year plan to boost transmission capacity.