By SEBASTINE OBASI

The level of deterioration in electricity supply in the country has manifested in the just released NOI Polls, which findings showed that an average of 63 percent of Nigerians (45 percent+18 percent) received less than five hours of continuous power supply daily.

The Poll also found that the majority (45percent) received between one to four hours of continuous power daily and 18 percent received zero (0) hours supply.

To this effect, NOI said that an average of 79 percent of Nigerians use alternative sources to augment their power supply and of this group, majority (72 percent) reported they experienced an increase in their spending on these alternative sources.

Also observed was the decline of power supply to households over the quarter as those that experienced any improvement in their power supply fell from 44 percent in January to 37 percent in March 2014. NOI also stated that an average of 63 percent of Nigerians experienced no improvement in their power supply, with 43 percent who experienced a worsened state and 20 percent having no difference at all. According to NOI, findings show a six-point decrease in the proportion of respondents that are hopeful about the power reforms from January (71 percent) to February (65 percent) and a 3-point increase in March (68 percent).

Furthermore, a trend analysis on the state of power across the three months shows a worsened state of power supply in March compared to January and February. This is evident on the fact that there was an 18-point increase in the total proportion of respondents that reported power has gone worse from January (36 percent) to March (54 percent).

Also, a three months trend analysis in the first quarter of 2014, illustrates a continuous increase in the spending of Nigerians on alternative sources of power supply. A four-point increase in the proportion of Nigerians that saw a drastic increase in their spending was experienced from January (50 percent) to February (54 percent), and then a significant increase in the same group by 14-Points from February to March (64 percent). Similarly, averages over the three months showed that 57 percent of the respondents who use alternate sources of power to augment their supply experienced a drastic increase in their spending on these sources. About 15 percent indicated a slight increase while another 15 percent claimed their spending remained the same.

Alternate sources of power

In addition, nine percent of the respondents experienced a slight decrease and four percent saw a drastic decrease in their spending on alternate sources of power.

According to NOI Polls, majority of Nigerians (73 percent) are aware of the power sector reforms by the Federal Government and of this group, 68 percent are hopeful about on-going reforms in the Power Sector. However, the challenges faced by the power sector in the post privatisation era have obviously negatively impacted the supply of power to Nigerian households especially in the month of March.

In order to fully yield the intended benefits of the privatisation of the power sector, the generating and distributing companies in collaboration with other stakeholders will have to rise up with a new age strategy (which could be borrowed from countries who have an efficient power sector) to tackling these issues which seems to have always been present from the history of the Nigerian power sector.