The power to sustain Nigeria’s industrialisation

Nigeria

Jennifer Adighije, managing director and CEO of Niger Delta Power Holding Company (NDPHC), talks to The Energy Year about the role renewable energy will play in Nigeria. NDPHC is a limited liability company with government stakeholders that was formed to implement the National Integrated Power Projects (NIPP) scheme.

Tell us about NDPHC’s trajectory since 2005 and its current assets and activities.
NDPHC was established in 2005 and is a private company with a shareholding fully held by federal, state and local governments. It is in charge of managing power projects under the NIPP scheme. Over the last 20 years, the company has had to deal with many unexpected events and situations. However, over the long term, this has allowed us to build resilience, and we can now navigate Nigeria’s very dynamic ecosystem.
Today, we have 10 gas power plants in our portfolio, seven of which are operational, with the other three under construction. Our total installed capacity is currently 3.85 GW. With the total capacity of the grid in the country being 14 GW, this means we control about 25% of it, making us critical players in Nigeria’s gas-to-energy ecosystem.
We have also reached major milestones in grid investments. So far, we have contributed over NGN 1 trillion [USD 650 million] to the transmission assets we have handed over to the TCN [Transmission Company of Nigeria] to enable the country to deliver electricity more efficiently and affordably to its end users.
Overall, it has been a very eventful journey, and with the upcoming phases of our trajectory, combined with the growing focus on renewables, we expect this to continue. Across the entire value chain, we are the company that has made the largest contribution to the country’s power sector, and we look forward to the journey ahead.

Tell us about the role renewable energy will play in Nigeria and what NDPHC’s goals are in this industry.
The potential in this sector is significant. Renewables represent a global trend and have been a topic of discussion in Nigeria since the previous administration developed the national renewable energy and efficiency policy, which set the target to achieve 30 GW of electricity by 2030, with renewable energy contributing 30%.
We are in full alignment with these goals, and we’re investing in developing our renewable energy solutions. We are also very keen on developing collaborations and partnerships to unlock grants to help us develop our renewable capacity.
We are pursuing renewable energy for several reasons. The first reason is to diversify our power-generation mix. Other advantages include cost competitiveness and the possibility to earn carbon credits.
Furthermore, this renewable energy capacity will help mitigate grid disturbances, as mini-hydropower plants and mini-grids are not dependent on the national grid. This gives us the opportunity to come up with captive solutions to power cities or industrial clusters without necessarily being tied to the grid.
It is true that Nigeria has issues related to storage, which will need to be developed to account for the growth in renewable energy. NDPHC is working with the regulator, NERC [Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission], to come up with solutions to optimise the proliferation of renewable energy and address these storage problems.

How important is Nigeria’s energy sector for the country’s future, and how should the country look to attract further investment to the sector?
The truth is that we cannot have sustainable industrialisation without reliable electricity. These industries are the backbone of any economy because their outputs directly manifest in job creation and poverty alleviation. This is why one of the cardinal points of President Tinubu’s Renewed Hope Agenda is to ensure that there’s access to electricity for Nigerians, which underscores our commitment to continuing to ramp up our generation output and our last-mile delivery to end users.
As one of the strategic initiatives of my leadership, we’re focusing on commercial activities because they are central to enhancing our revenue and earnings potential. They are also central to fostering industrialisation. To do this, we are sealing a partnership with the EFCC [Economic and Financial Crimes Commission], which will allow us to be more transparent in our dealings with our service providers.
Linked to this move, in order to attract further investments, Nigeria’s energy industry needs to be anchored in the principles of transparency, accountability, responsibility and fairness. These, combined with our ability to operate more efficiently and abide by global best practices, we believe, will enhance the potential to bring more investment to the sector. Finally, collaboration across the entire value chain is key to inspiring confidence in those willing to invest in our ecosystem.

What are your goals and visions for the coming years at NDPHC?
The vision of our new management is anchored in a threefold optimisation strategy. The first component is the optimisation of the performance of our assets to ramp up our revenues. The second is the optimisation of our processes to drive operational efficiency, and the third is leveraging technology and human capital to drive and sustain positive change.
For us the key is to keep our employees happy and inspire them to be motivated and therefore be more productive. If we can do this, we are very optimistic that, with the initiatives that we have in place, we can remain a market leader in the gas-to-energy ecosystem and unlock greater rewards for our shareholders.
Finally, a specific goal we have for the next few years is to implement our recovery plan for energy generation units which are experiencing outages. For this we are very keen on fostering a relationship with GE to restore those units to the grid. The target therefore, by the end of 2025, is to ensure that our full 3.85 GW of installed capacity is available so we can contribute as much power as possible to the grid.

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