Modeling the Accessibility to Electricity in Nigeria using Time Series Technique

Abstract

Access to electricity in Nigeria has been a major issue for the country for many years. With a rapidly growing population and an increasing demand for electricity, the country has struggled to provide a reliable and sustainable source of power. This work focuses on modeling access to electricity in Nigeria spanning 1990 to 2020 extracted from the World Bank database. The data was subjected to Augmented Dickey-fuller test and the Box-Jenkins ARIMA time series methodology was used for analysis. The time plot showed a continuous fluctuation of access to electricity in an upward trend direction and the result of the augmented Dickey-Fuller (ADF) unit root test suggested that the series is not stationary at original level, but the model incorporates first differencing. The electricity accessibility series was modeled and predicted using the Autoregressive Integrated Moving Average Model (ARIMA). ARIMA (0,1,1) was selected as the appropriate optimal model based on the Akaike's Information Criterion and Bayesian Information Criterion. Likewise, from the result of the forecast the access to electricity in Nigeria will continue to rise for the next 10 years. It was recommended that the government should make efforts to address the issue by implementing reforms, privatizing the electricity sector, and investing in renewable energy sources such as solar and wind power.