Nearly three years after the Electricity Act 2023 dismantled the legal monopoly that once concentrated authority in Abuja, many states are still dithering.
This hesitation is costly. It prolongs a failed centralised model dominated by underperforming GenCos and DisCos, while businesses and households remain trapped in darkness or forced to rely on expensive generators.
The facts are distressing. Nigeria generates barely 4,000–5,000MW for over 230 million people, against an estimated demand of 40,000MW. There has been no improvement in this sorry state since 1999.
The result is an “invisible shadow grid,” where over 70 per cent of firms self-generate power. Dangote Industries alone generates 1,500MW of the estimated 25,000MW privately generated.
The Manufacturers Association of Nigeria has repeatedly lamented that industrial concerns now spend over 40 per cent of operating costs on energy, eroding competitiveness, shrinking margins, and forcing many to shut down. Small businesses fare even worse, throttled by erratic supply and high fuel costs. No serious industrial economy runs this way.
The Electricity Act has the potential to break this cycle. Empowering states to regulate generation, transmission, and distribution within their jurisdictions, it introduces competition, local accountability, and investment flexibility.
Yet only a fraction of states have embraced this opportunity. The laggards are Adamawa, Akwa Ibom, Bauchi, Benue, Borno, Cross River, Delta, Ebonyi, Gombe, Jigawa, Kaduna, Kano, Katsina, Kebbi, Kwara, Osun, Rivers, Sokoto, Taraba, Yobe and Zamfara.
They are effectively choosing to remain hostages to a broken system.
This is baffling because the evidence of what works is already visible. The $800 million 141 MW Geometric Power Aba project offers a compelling blueprint. Supported by the African Export-Import Bank, the integrated Aba power model combines generation and distribution within a defined industrial cluster.
Even at partial capacity, it supplies uninterrupted electricity to tens of thousands of users and is projected to cut outage costs by $1.3 billion annually.
AFREXIM projects that Geometric will power over 25,000 SMEs and deliver up to 300,000 indirect jobs, new industries, and fiscal surpluses. This illustrates the fact that reliable power transforms economies.
Critically, Aba also demonstrates that Nigerians are willing to pay for reliable electricity. This is the central fallacy of current tariff debates. Consumers do not resist pricing per se, but exploitation via high tariffs for poor service.
The intervention by the Enugu State Electricity Regulatory Commission underscores this point.
By adopting a transparent, data-driven pricing model, Enugu reduced tariffs (especially the dubious Band A variant) to N160 per kWh, down nearly 23 per cent from the federal average of N208 per kWh, while maintaining cost reflectivity.
Decentralisation allows states to replicate such models and tailor tariffs to local realities, enforcing service standards and protecting consumers. It also opens the door to embedded generation, mini-grids, and renewable energy solutions that bypass the inefficiencies of the national grid.
As the former Power Minister Adebayo Adelabu rightly noted, a country as vast as Nigeria cannot be powered from a single command centre.
Yet gas remains a major constraint. Nigeria’s thermal plants depend heavily on gas feeds, but supply remains erratic due to inadequate pipeline infrastructure and weak commercial frameworks.
The Aba project itself operates well below capacity because gas deliveries fall short by up to 80 per cent at times.
This raises a critical question about why the Federal Government has been so slow to expand domestic gas pipelines despite abundant reserves. Without a reliable gas supply, private investment in power will continue to underperform.
States must therefore think beyond conventional generation. Diversification to solar, wind, and small hydro projects can complement gas-fired plants, especially in off-grid and rural areas.
Mini-grids and standalone systems can electrify communities faster and cheaper than extending the national grid.
Here, Nigeria’s universities and research institutions have been conspicuously absent. In a country battling chronic energy poverty, the lack of homegrown innovation in storage, grid management, and renewable integration is indefensible.
The broader point is that the era of excuses is over. The legal framework exists. The economic case is overwhelming. The technology is available. What are the states waiting for?
Every day of delay entrenches inefficiency, fuels inflation, and drives businesses out of Nigeria. Conversely, every state that takes control of its electricity market moves closer to economic autonomy and industrial revival.
The success of Aba should not remain an isolated experiment; it should become a national template.
States can do better than pumping billions into airports that are barely used or flyovers where none are needed.
If states are serious about growth, jobs, and competitiveness, they must seize the powers already granted to them, decisively and without delay.
