Nigeria’s Power Sector Privatization – A Colossal Misstep Plunging Households into Darkness and Economic Despair

By Adamu Aliyu Aliyu/ABUJA//

The Nigerian populace is reeling from the catastrophic fallout of a deeply flawed and hastily executed privatization process that handed the nation’s vital power sector to inexperienced and ill-equipped companies. This egregious misstep, masquerading as reform, has entrenched inefficiency, waste, and systemic criminality, plunging households into unrelenting darkness, economic hardship, and despair while forcing them to bear the crushing weight of skyrocketing electricity tariffs.

In 2009, the National Electric Power Authority (NEPA), later Power Holding Company of Nigeria (PHCN), generated 3,800MW of electricity under a single Managing Director/CEO. Today, post-privatization, the sector—splintered into 25 entities, including TCN, AEDC, EKEDC, PHEDCO, NERC, and others—produces a mere 5,400MW. These entities are overseen by no fewer than 25 MD/CEOs and over 100 executive directors, all siphoning exorbitant salaries from the scant revenue of this marginal output. This is nothing less than a brazen looting of national resources.

Sold to Nigerians as the cure for NEPA/PHCN’s inefficiencies, privatization has instead magnified those failures. The sector is now paralyzed by a bloated bureaucracy, diverting funds meant for infrastructure, grid expansion, and service delivery to sustain an army of overpaid executives.

The result? Households across Nigeria are trapped in a cycle of erratic power supply, with many enduring days without electricity, forcing reliance on costly and environmentally harmful generators.

The impact on households is devastating. Families are compelled to allocate a disproportionate share of their income to electricity tariffs that have soared to unbearable levels, leaving little for essentials like food, education, and healthcare. Small businesses run from homes—tailoring, barbing, and retail—are collapsing under the dual burden of unreliable power and unaffordable bills, pushing families deeper into poverty. In this day and age children struggle to study in darkness, compromising their education and future prospects. The psychological toll is immense, as the constant uncertainty of power availability breeds frustration and hopelessness among citizens already grappling with economic challenges.

Exacerbating this crisis, the privatized companies, unable to improve power generation or expand customer coverage, have callously resorted to hiking tariffs as a misguided fix for their self-inflicted financial woes. This approach is not only illogical but predatory, punishing households for the companies’ own incompetence. The revenue shortfall stems directly from their failure to generate sufficient power to serve more customers, yet they have chosen to heap unbearable costs on struggling families rather than address their inefficiencies.

The claim of illiquidity by these power companies is a flimsy excuse to evade accountability for their gross mismanagement. How can a sector generating just 5,400MW—barely a 42% increase in 16 years—support the lavish lifestyles of 25 MD/CEOs and their sprawling retinues? The revenue from this inadequate output cannot sustain such reckless expenditure.

This is not illiquidity; it is a deliberate scheme to prioritize personal enrichment over the welfare of Nigerian households.

The Nigerian people deserve better. We demand an immediate overhaul of the power sector, starting with a forensic audit of all privatized entities to expose the scale of financial mismanagement.

The government must hold these companies accountable, reverse the privatization *where* necessary, and prioritize competent, transparent management to restore reliable and affordable electricity. The unjust tariff hikes must be reversed, and a moratorium placed on further increases until tangible improvements in power generation and distribution are achieved.

Enough is enough.

Nigerian households cannot continue to suffer the consequences of a privatization process that has enriched a few while impoverishing millions. The time for action is now.