Nigeria’s power challenge and progress

By Tony Erha

There is no debate about Nigeria’s power crisis. Millions still live on generators and inverters. Businesses run below capacity. Communities endure long outages. The national grid is fragile, and the gap between installed capacity and actual supply remains painfully wide.

Managing Director of Leadership Newspapers and columnist, Azu Ishiekwene, is right about the problem. Nigeria has not solved its electricity crisis. No serious Minister of Power should pretend otherwise.

But a system can be deeply broken and still begin to move in the right direction. That distinction is essential in assessing Joseph Tegbe’s first 100 days.

A minister who has spent barely three months in office cannot be expected to fix a failure of decades. He cannot be judged as if he inherited a working market, nor should he be dismissed because the lights have not suddenly come on everywhere. The fair question is: what has actually changed? What Tegbe inherited.

Tegbe did not inherit an empty cupboard. He inherited a structurally weak sector. Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission [NERC] data for April 2026 puts installed grid-connected capacity at 13,625MW. Average available capacity that month was just 4,286MW. Only about a third was available for dispatch. That is the crisis in one number.

The financials are worse. The sector’s debt backlog is about N3.3 trillion, with only 27% of GenCos’ invoices being paid. That chokes gas supply, generation, and maintenance across the entire value chain.

His predecessor admitted it. In January 2025, then Minister Adelabu described the grid as old and dilapidated, saying government was merely managing it pending a major overhaul. Grid disturbances were frequent. In April 2024 alone, Nigeria had suffered its fifth collapse of the year. The starting point was ugly.

What has actually moved. Start with generation.

Before June, generation and transmission hovered between 3,700MW and 4,700MW. In the weeks before Tegbe’s 100-day briefing in September, it crossed 5,000MW, with a peak of 5,330MW in August and September.

That does not mean 24-hour power. It does mean a measurable shift at system level. NERC’s August factsheet corroborates it: average available capacity of 4,758MW, with 4,102MW utilised. Then Alaoji. A 375MW plant offline for three years is now back on the grid.

On transmission, interventions in Lagos and Abuja have unlocked 912MW of additional capacity – 672MW from new transformers at Apapa, Ijora, Alausa and Lekki, and 240MW from a 300MVA transformer at Katampe.

These are not promises. They are physical additions to the system. They will not light up every home tomorrow, but they cannot be dismissed because Wuse Market still runs generators.

Another telling intervention: over 300 containers of critical power equipment, long stranded at the ports, have been released for inspection and deployment. It is a quintessentially Nigerian paradox – unfinished projects in the field, equipment stuck in ports. Moving them is unglamorous, but essential. Metering, money and the hidden work.

Consider 350,000. That is the number of meters installed in Tegbe’s first 100 days, taking cumulative installations to 1,004,260 as of August 2026. Resolution of litigation around the AMMON programme has also unlocked procurement of 1.4 million smart meters, while 5,000 young Nigerians are being trained as installers.

A meter does not generate power, but it fixes one of the market’s most corrosive problems: estimated billing. It makes consumption measurable, billing defensible, and revenue more transparent.

Then liquidity. The Federal Government has raised N1.23 trillion towards the N3.3 trillion debt backlog. It does not clear the debt, but it is a substantial injection into a value chain whose illiquidity threatened collapse. The Presidency had earlier confirmed a phased settlement of verified legacy debts through the domestic capital market.

Along the Ikorodu-Sagamu industrial corridor, interventions are targeting energy theft and revenue losses estimated at N120 billion annually. No ribbon-cutting, but critical work. Power reform is often like that. The most consequential gains happen inside the machinery before consumers feel them.The freezer is not the story.

Tegbe’s “freezer” comment – that some areas now enjoy up to 18 hours, with residents joking that their freezers are freezing too much – has been blown out of proportion.

As a national claim, it would be absurd. Nigeria is not on 18 hours of supply. Tegbe himself has clarified: system-wide improvement does not mean improvement on every feeder.

That is the reality of the grid. One location can have 18 hours while another is in darkness. The country can hit 5,330MW at peak while a factory still runs diesel. Lagos and Abuja can gain transmission capacity while another cluster suffers.

All three can be true at once. Something has changed. It simply has not changed everywhere. The real test is not the anecdote. It is whether early, localised gains can be converted into sustained, wider, commercially viable supply.The harder test. Pretending Tegbe has fixed power in 100 days is dishonest. He has not. Giving him a free pass because generation crossed 5,000MW is also wrong.

But claiming nothing has changed is equally dishonest. The evidence says otherwise: A 375MW plant back on the grid. 912MW of transmission capacity unlocked. Generation peak of 5,330MW. About 350,000 meters in 100 days. Over one million cumulatively. N1.23 trillion mobilised for debts. Over 300 containers of equipment released. Specific transmission corridors and a Super Grid proposal outlined for the next phase.

What matters now is what Tegbe does with this acknowledgement that national numbers do not invalidate local pain. That is a useful stance for a minister – it respects the difference between a spreadsheet and a household. Nigeria does not need another minister who declares victory because a graph moved. It needs one who takes a moving graph and keeps pushing until it becomes a lived experience.

That is the burden on Tegbe’s desk. The problems are formidable. Expectations are huge. Patience is thin. Three months is enough to show direction. It is not enough to deliver transformation. The power sector is still broken.

But the machinery is beginning to move.

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