The staff of Ikeja Electricity Distribution Company (DISCO) in Lagos, Nigeria, were thrown into a state of pandemonium as they were discomfited when their offices were raided by a contingent of Air Force personnel on the afternoon of March 6, 2025.
Their offense? The Air Force base had been denied electricity supply, prompting the officers’ invasion of the Ikeja DISCO premises in a manner reminiscent of how Hamas operatives attacked a youth festival on October 7, 2023, during which 1,200 Israelis were killed and 250 abducted as hostages. This incident triggered a war that is still ongoing, now inching toward its second year.
Hamas militants claim that Israel has been occupying their land illegally and oppressing Palestinians, despite continued United Nations (UN) interventions through dialogue and resolutions over more than half a century since Israel was allotted the land through UN Resolution No. 181—also known as the Partition Resolution—in 1947, which took effect in 1948.
Similarly, the mayhem unleashed on Ikeja DISCO for demanding payment for a service rendered occurred at a time when Nigerians had not yet fully digested (if it were food) the news that the electricity generated, transmitted, and distributed from the national grid to factories and homes had increased from roughly 4,000 megawatts—an embarrassing figure for a country with over 200 million people—to 5,800 megawatts.
Curiously and coincidentally, after Ikeja DISCO personnel were beaten up and their premises vandalized, there was another electricity grid collapse that plunged the nation into darkness for a considerable time on March 7, 2025.
Unsurprisingly, conspiracy theorists are attempting to link this latest grid collapse to the sympathy of electricity workers for their colleagues in Eko DISCO, who were brutalized by Air Force personnel after being frustrated by the disconnection of electricity supply to their facility and subsequently took the law into their own hands.
Similarly, those keeping records assert that the March 7, 2025, collapse of the national grid was the third shutdown of electricity supply this year, which is just in its third month. This implies an average of one collapse per month, with the last occurring on February 12, 2025.
Sadly, a statistical analysis of the frequency of electricity supply shutdowns from the national grid paints an even grimmer picture of Nigeria’s electricity system.
Let’s take a cursory look at the jarring numbers:
Last year, Nigeria recorded 12 system collapses, meaning there was an average of one per month. Over the past decade, reports indicate that the national electricity grid crashed no fewer than 100 times, often plunging the country into darkness for multiple hours—sometimes even days.
The primary reason for the frequent collapse of Nigeria’s electricity system is that the infrastructure, inherited from the colonial era, is an antiquity of sorts.
To illustrate the state of Nigeria’s electricity system in a way most Nigerians can relate to, I would like to share a story about a friend of mine who, as a student at the University of Benin, owned a beat-up Volkswagen Beetle.
Back in those days, unless one was the offspring of very wealthy parents, owning a car as a student was as distant a possibility as the separation between day and night.
The Beetle was so rundown that it wouldn’t start by merely turning the ignition key; it had to be pushed if on flat ground. To make things easier, my friend always parked on a slope so he wouldn’t need help starting the car.
By applying these strategies, he managed to get by with his Beetle without much stress and was seen as one of the “big boys” with mobility. However, if a novice unaware of this trick parked the car on flat land, they would be hamstrung, unable to start the car without soliciting help from others to give it a push.
This narrative is a fitting analogy for Nigeria’s dilapidated electricity infrastructure.
The moral of the story? The Minister of Power, Mr. Adebayo Adelabu, is like the novice driver of the Volkswagen Beetle in this anecdote. He has been overloading an outdated transmission infrastructure that is too weak to sustain the load—against the advice of experts who are well aware of the grid’s inadequate capacity. As a result, the system has collapsed frequently and alarmingly.
By the same token, Nigeria’s electricity system can be equated to the battered and antiquated Volkswagen Beetle in my friend’s story.
Meanwhile, the equivalent of my friend in the anecdote are the time-tested managers of our national electricity grid, who have skillfully managed to keep the system running—albeit at a suboptimal performance level—just as my friend did with his Volkswagen Beetle.
From this anecdote, it is evident that the bane of Nigeria’s electricity sector is the lack of maintenance, upgrades, and scaling up of our power infrastructure since the colonial era.
Due to gross neglect, the system has become so outdated that it should be in a museum for historical reference. Yet, lacking a viable alternative, this aged and poorly maintained infrastructure has remained the primary platform for electricity generation, transmission, and distribution in Nigeria for nearly a century—ten decades of stagnation.
That is why electricity is still being delivered intermittently in Nigeria 65 years after the exit of the colonialists who pioneered the construction of the national grid—at least as far back as 1914, when the northern and southern protectorates of Nigeria were amalgamated. This was a result of the European invasion and scramble for Africa, which led to the partitioning of the continent in 1884/85.
It is particularly the transmission aspect of the three (3) key processes—generation, transmission, and distribution—that is in a terrible state of disrepair. This is because, when the generation (GENCOs) and distribution (DISCOs) aspects of electricity supply were unbundled, transmission remained under government control. So, while GENCOs and DISCOs, under private investors, have to some extent upgraded their equipment, the Transmission Company of Nigeria (TCN) has been shackled by bureaucratic bottlenecks that define the public sector, preventing it from boosting its capacity through infrastructure upgrades.
As a result, the weak link in the electricity supply chain is the transmission segment, simply because, during the unbundling of the electricity system—when it was transferred from government control to the private sector—transmission was retained by the government.
The privatization exercise began in 2005 under President Olusegun Obasanjo’s administration as part of the government’s privatization of public enterprises program. It was driven by Vice President Atiku Abubakar, with Nasir El-Rufai as the Director-General of the Bureau of Public Enterprises (BPE), which oversaw the process.
Subsequently, during the tenure of former President Goodluck Jonathan in 2013, he further liberalized the economy by selling the country’s electricity assets to private sector operators.
However, the power struggle between President Obasanjo and Vice President Abubakar in the twilight of their tenure in 2007—centered on Abubakar’s ambition to succeed his boss—degenerated into political conflicts that exposed salacious details of how public funds were squandered on mistresses as both leaders sought to undermine each other. Unfortunately, this otherwise laudable initiative of privatizing the power sector suffered collateral damage.
Notably, unlike the privatization of the telecommunications sector around year 2000—which saw major African telecoms players like MTN from South Africa and Econet from Zimbabwe bidding for and winning licenses before Nigeria’s indigenous titan, Globacom (led by Chief Mike Adenuga), joined the market—the unbundling of Nigeria’s electricity sector did not attract deep-pocketed global or continental investors.
Instead, the concessions were grabbed by individuals who could be described as “fly-by-night” or “briefcase” businessmen, often partnering with companies from countries on the fringes of development or just slightly more advanced than Nigeria, such as those in Eastern Europe.
Clearly, the new owners of Nigeria’s electricity assets lacked the financial strength and technical expertise that companies like Siemens of Germany could have brought to the table if they had been attracted to the market. This is evident from the fact that, about a decade after these assets were handed over to the private sector, electricity supply has not improved significantly. In fact, many operators—particularly in the distribution segment—have become unviable due to their inability to sustain operations.
It remains unclear whether the failure of the electricity sector to meet Nigerians’ expectations—unlike the remarkable improvement in telecom services following deregulation—was due to a lack of adherence to international best practices and professionalism. The telecoms sector reform was successfully managed by Dr. Ernest Ndukwe, whose leadership ensured a smooth transition and robust sectoral growth.
However, what is certain is that, out of the forty (40) GENCOs and eleven (11) DISCOs that emerged from the privatization exercise, according to the National Electricity Regulatory Commission (NERC), only Ikeja, Eko, and, to some extent, Abuja DISCOs can be said to have recorded a modicum of success.
Unlike the DISCOs, the GENCOs have performed relatively well, increasing electricity generation to about 15,000 megawatts by upgrading legacy facilities and attracting new investments from start-ups or greenfield projects. Some notable firms in this space include Azure Power Plant in Edo State and Geometric Power in Abia State, among others.
Thus, with a combination of legacy power plants under new management and newly established plants investing significantly in system upgrades, electricity generation has increased from about 4,000 to 15,000 megawatts. Unfortunately, the challenge remains the inadequate transmission capacity of the existing, dilapidated infrastructure—most of which is at least half a century old.
Does it not seem absurd that such a significant volume of electricity is being generated, yet only about a quarter of it reaches end-users? Disappointingly, this is the reality in Nigeria.
While the GENCOs and, to some extent, the DISCOs have invested in upgrading equipment and expertise to improve their output, TCN remains the weak link in the value chain. Its decaying infrastructure is unable to transmit the electricity generated to the DISCOs for distribution to consumers—both industrial and domestic.
The reason for this absurdity is that TCN remains under government ownership, making it subject to bureaucratic bottlenecks that define the public sector.
Ideally, the electricity sector should not have been split into three separate ownership structures.
The global best practice is to sell the entire value chain—generation, transmission, and distribution—to a single investor capable of handling all three aspects. This contrasts with the current Nigerian model, which follows a division-of-labor approach where different operators manage each aspect of the electricity supply chain without equal financial and technical capacity.
As such, the chain of services—from electricity generation to transmission through the grids and delivery to end users in factories and homes—has proven to be weak at the point of the “handshake” or transfer between the three distinct service providers, resembling a relay race in athletics.
In advanced economies, electricity companies are assigned exclusive market zones or coverage areas where they generate, transmit, and distribute electricity seamlessly to customers.
However, perhaps drawing from the telecom sector—where it was operationally feasible for multiple operators to compete within the same spectrum—electricity service permits in Nigeria were divided into three areas, with multiple firms operating different aspects of the system in an interlinked form.
Thus, the structure was designed to function through inter-agency cooperation, much like the security sector, where the police maintain order by arresting and prosecuting offenders, courts try them and issue sentences based on legal interpretations, legislators create the laws applied by the courts, and correctional institutions (prisons) ensure that convicts serve their sentences.
In essence, Nigeria’s electricity situation can be likened to a community on the bank of a river that began to be polluted in 2005 and became completely contaminated by 2013.
To prevent the river from becoming poisonous, 2025 should mark the beginning of efforts to purify the water and make it safe for consumption again.
Given this reality, Nigerians must move beyond lamenting what has gone wrong in the electricity sector—failures that have largely hindered the country’s industrialization—and instead focus on actionable solutions.
At this juncture, it is appropriate to consider how Nigerian leaders can remove the current obstacles in the generation, transmission, and distribution of electricity, thereby catalyzing the long-sought industrialization of our nation for the progress and prosperity of the population.
The solution is complex, but as a guide, Nigeria can learn from China—the world’s second-largest economy—and India, the most populous country and currently the fastest-growing major economy.
Incidentally, both China and India, three decades ago, faced electricity shortages similar to Nigeria’s current predicament. Thus, studying how these nations transformed themselves into global manufacturing hubs would be a valuable and instructive exercise for Nigerian policymakers and industry stakeholders.
Lessons from China
China overcame its electricity challenges through a combination of strategic initiatives, including:
1. Embedding electrification into development plans – Making electricity central to the country’s poverty eradication strategy, including programs like the Infrastructure to Every Village Project, which extended power, roads, water, and telecom services to rural areas.
2. Coordinating all stakeholders – The central government provided policy leadership and investment, while provincial governments assessed local conditions and coordinated project implementation. This enabled the efficient extension and renovation of rural grids, ensuring that even the final 3% of the population without electricity gained access.
3. Investing in renewable energy – China aimed to increase the share of non-fossil energy to around 20% of total consumption by 2025 by building mega clean energy bases, integrated data centers, and smart grids to stabilize power supply.
4. Expanding power transmission infrastructure – The country invested in hybrid multi-terminal high-voltage direct current (HVDC) transmission lines to bridge the gap between power-rich and power-deficient regions.
All these measures contributed to China achieving full electrification in 2015, enabling its rise as the world’s leading industrial hub.
Lessons from India
India, which shares historical similarities with Nigeria as a former British colony, was once in an energy crisis similar to Nigeria’s current situation. However, through strategic reforms, it successfully overcame electricity insecurity.
Key institutional reforms included:
1. Establishment of Electricity Regulatory Commissions (ERCs) – Independent regulators were set up at the central and state levels to oversee the power sector, ensure fair competition, and protect consumer interests.
2. Creation of the Central Electricity Authority (CEA) – The CEA was designated as the nodal agency to coordinate and integrate the national power system.
Key policy initiatives included:
• Electricity Act (2003) – Introduced reforms such as the unbundling of state electricity boards, promotion of private sector participation, and establishment of a national grid.
• National Electricity Policy (2005) – Aimed to provide universal electricity access, promote energy efficiency, and ensure a reliable power supply.
• Renewable Energy Policy – Set ambitious targets to achieve 40% of installed power capacity from non-fossil fuels by 2030.
Infrastructure Development
1. Expansion of Power Generation Capacity – India increased its power generation from 112 GW in 2005 to over 400 GW in 2022, with a strong focus on renewable energy.
2. Development of a National Grid – Strengthened infrastructure to enable efficient transmission and distribution of power nationwide.
3. Smart Grid Initiatives – Modernized grid infrastructure, improved energy efficiency, and enhanced consumer experience.
Financial Incentives
1. Viability Gap Funding (VGF) – Government-provided financial support to make renewable energy projects more viable.
2. Tax Incentives – Encouraged private sector investment in the power sector.
3. Low-Cost Funding – Provided financing for power sector projects through institutions like the Power Finance Corporation.
These measures significantly contributed to India’s success in overcoming electricity insecurity, fueling industrialization, and economic growth.
There were several other initiatives too numerous to detail here, but the key takeaway is that India was highly intentional in its approach. Consequently, it scaled up energy production from 190 GW to 400 GW and has now positioned itself as a global manufacturing hub.
This success is reflected in India’s Make in India campaign, a slogan frequently advertised on global media outlets like CNN, inviting companies worldwide to manufacture in India—a space currently dominated by China.
It is doubtless that Nigeria has a lot to learn from both China and India, particularly India, which leveraged World Bank funding—one reason similar policies are being implemented in Nigeria, albeit with less vigor.
A cursory look at the reasons behind Nigeria’s energy crisis reveals a deeply disheartening and disappointing reality.
In 1914, the Northern and Southern Protectorates of the British Empire were amalgamated to form Nigeria. In 1960, Nigeria gained independence from its British colonizers and was divided into three regions: Northern, Western, and Eastern. After the January 1966 military coup d’état and the subsequent counter-coup in June, democratic governance was disrupted, and the country descended into a civil war. As the war ended, the military government under General Yakubu Gowon (1966–1975) created twelve (12) states. Subsequently, Nigeria was further divided into 19 states and, eventually, into the 36 states that currently make up the country.
However, despite these administrative divisions over the past 65 years, Nigeria’s electricity system has remained largely unchanged from the structure established by the colonialists in the 1890s.
The lack of significant investment in expanding electricity generation, transmission, and distribution is evidenced by the fact that these systems have remained centralized, even as the country has evolved politically and administratively.
Given this reality, is it not perplexing that Nigerians still expect stable and sufficient electricity supply when investment in the sector—particularly in transmission—has remained stagnant?
For instance, Minister of Power Adebayo Adelabu recently stated that power generation companies (GENCOs), now privately driven, are owed as much as ₦350 billion. That amount is enough to cripple the sector, which requires funding not only to sustain operations but also to generate returns for investors who have committed substantial capital to these power plants.
In fact, some of these funds were borrowed from banks. If the loans are not serviced, the sector’s collapse could trigger systemic failures in the banking industry, with devastating consequences for Nigeria’s economy and its citizens.
As for the electricity distribution companies (DISCOs), their workers face significant risks in the course of delivering electricity to end users. This was exemplified by the recent invasion of Ikeja Electricity Distribution Company by Nigerian Air Force personnel from the Ikeja Base in Lagos. The officers reportedly laid siege to the company and attacked its staff after the base was disconnected due to an outstanding ₦4 billion debt accrued over the past decade.
This situation is not unique to Lagos. Similar challenges exist between other DISCOs and military formations, as well as government offices nationwide.
At one point, even the Abuja DISCO threatened to disconnect Aso Rock Villa—the seat of presidential power—over unpaid electricity bills. Similarly, some state governments that defaulted on their payments have also been put on notice for disconnection by service providers in their respective zones.
This persistent issue reflects a deeply entrenched culture within government institutions, where non-payment for electricity has become the norm. Historically, the provision of utilities—such as electricity and water—was the sole responsibility of the government. Consequently, many civil and public servants still struggle to accept that the electricity sector has been privatized and that government agencies must now pay for the service, just like any other consumer.
To address this systemic issue, the government must correct the structural deficiencies that have led to recurring disputes between service providers and consumers, which, in some cases, have escalated into physical confrontations.
To prevent another embarrassing incident like the one at Ikeja DISCO—reminiscent of when the Nigerian Air Force stormed the NITEL office over unpaid telephone bills—the current administration must develop innovative solutions to ensure that Ministries, Departments, and Agencies (MDAs) settle their electricity bills promptly.
One potential solution is for the issue to be formally discussed at the National Executive Council (NEC). If prioritized at that level, a dedicated budget line could be created for electricity bills, ensuring timely allocation and payment at market-reflective rates.
A Path Forward
The necessary reforms in Nigeria’s electricity sector are complex, primarily because generation, transmission, and distribution are currently owned and operated separately.
However, the Transmission Company of Nigeria (TCN), which oversees electricity transmission, remains wholly government-owned. This presents an opportunity for privatization, allowing a new set of investors to integrate generation, transmission, and distribution within unified business portfolios—similar to models in advanced economies.
Currently, of the 11 DISCOs operating in Nigeria, only three (3) are considered viable, while the remaining eight (8) have been taken over by the government. This means that only the viable DISCOs need to be merged with GENCOs—most of which are financially stable.
Thus, mergers and acquisitions should be pursued within the sector.
Among the approximately 40 power plants in Nigeria are:
• Ughelli Power Plant (Delta State)
• Afam Power (Port Harcourt)
• Azura Power Plant (Edo State)
• Geregu Power Plant (Kogi State)
• Geometrics Power (Abia State)
Given this situation, the government must be prepared to sell off underperforming DISCOs to GENCOs. In turn, these GENCOs should be ready and financially capable of acquiring transmission infrastructure in their respective zones, aligning with global best practices.
This restructuring is undoubtedly a herculean task. However, as the saying goes, “No pain, no gain.”
Leadership and the Road to Industrialization
To overcome these challenges, Nigeria’s electricity sector needs visionary leadership, guided by the wisdom of the sort expressed by Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum:
“An easy life doesn’t make men, nor does it build nations. Challenges make men, and it is these men who build nations.”
It is imperative for President Bola Tinubu’s administration to declare a state of emergency in the electricity sector—just as China and India did. Their bold reforms catalyzed unprecedented industrial revolutions, which Nigeria desperately needs to emulate.
As Ernest Hemingway aptly put it:
“Go all the way with it. Do not back off. For once, go all the way with what matters.”
At this critical juncture in Nigeria’s development, abundant electricity supply matters greatly because it is the foundation for the country’s long-awaited industrial take-off.
***Magnus Onyibe, an entrepreneur, public policy analyst, author, democracy advocate, development strategist, alumnus of the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts University, Massachusetts, USA, and a former commissioner in the Delta State government, sent this piece from Lagos, Nigeria.
To continue with this conversation and more, please visit www.magnum.ng.