For decades, Nigeria’s electricity sector has been a tragic theatre of mismanagement, corruption, policy somersaults, and calculated sabotage. From the days of the Electricity Corporation of Nigeria (ECN), to National Electric Power Authority (NEPA), metamorphosing into Power Holding Company of Nigeria (PHCN) and eventually privatised into a cartel of Generation Companies (GenCos) Distribution Companies (DisCos) and the Transmission Company of Nigeria (TCN), the story has remained the same; darkness dressed in bureaucracy, with the average Nigerian left to grope through daily life. Now, the insult has evolved into structured extortion in the form of a “band system” that classifies consumers into unrealistic tariffs, without the promised regular power supply. This is not different from the ravaging banditry across the country but now officially escalated and replicated in the lean pockets of hapless Nigerian electricity consumers.
When the ECN was established in 1950, it stirred national optimism that homes and industries across the newly independent Nigeria would be lit up. By the 1970s, ECN gave way to the NEPA, which Nigerians quickly renamed “Never Expect Power Always.” This name was not coined out of cynicism but birthed from lived experience of lights flickering for minutes before plunging entire communities into darkness for days or even weeks or months.
NEPA, for all its structural intentions, was neither commercially viable nor technically stable. Infrastructure was outdated, corruption was rife, and power generation could not keep up with demand. Instead of overhaul, it received over-bloated budgets that rarely translated into infrastructure upgrades or consumer satisfaction.
However, in the early 2000s, the government decided that NEPA was beyond redemption and morphed it into the PHCN. But the only power PHCN managed to hold was Nigerians to ransom. The epileptic supply continued, and with it came overbilling, and mysterious. The fundamental problem, a state-run monopoly with zero consumer accountability, remained unaddressed.
Then came the golden promise: Privatisation. The Federal Government pledged that breaking up the power sector and handing it over to private investors would improve efficiency, foster competition, and attract funding. What Nigerians got instead was daylight robbery sanctioned by overflowing agbada and sealed with handshakes.
In 2013, Nigeria’s power sector was unbundled into GenCos, DisCos, TCN, while the government retained a regulatory role through Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission, (NERC). Unfortunately, what was sold to the public as a market liberalisation strategy turned out to be a fraudulent auction where cronies or proxies and connected firms with little or no energy experience took over national assets at giveaway prices.
Rather than transform the sector, these companies began bleeding it. Generation capacity hovered between 4,000 and 5,000 megawatts, quite laughable for a country of over 200 million people. Transmission and distribution remained abysmal. Yet, consumers were slammed with arbitrary bills, especially those still caught in the dragnet of estimated billing. Most communities had to contribute money to buy transformers, electric poles, and cables, items that should rightfully be provided by ‘privatised’ DisCos in exchange for their tariffs.
In essence, Nigerians were paying for their own power infrastructure, maintaining it, and still getting blackouts as a reward. The so-called DisCos became nothing more than rent-collecting entities with zero accountability.
A proper metering system is the backbone of a transparent and fair electricity market. But in Nigeria, it has become a game of perpetual pilot schemes and moving goalposts. The Meter Asset Provider, MAP, programme was supposed to address the metering gap, which stands at over 50% nationwide. Yet, years later, millions of consumers still rely on estimated billing, the euphemism for legalised extortion.
Consumers are charged thousands of naira monthly for power they never consumed. Complaints to DisCos are often met with disdain or silence. Even when meters are procured, they are riddled with software issues, mysterious “debt” accumulation on prepaid meters, high tariffs, and unexplained units disappearing like ghosts in the night.
In 2024, the government introduced a new electricity pricing regime, classifying consumers into bands, A through E, with A representing those who supposedly enjoy 20+ hours of power daily and E representing those with four hours or less. On paper, this looked like a clever mechanism to subsidise low-income areas and ensure targeted development. In practice, it has become another bare-faced racket.
Many consumers placed in Band A zones do not enjoy 20 hours of electricity, yet they are required to pay through their noses the heavy unconscionable tariffs for phantom power. With tariffs reaching as high as 225 per kilowatt-hour, comparable to or exceeding some parts of Europe, the irony couldn’t be thicker: Citizens in darkness paying world-class prices for a stone-age service.
The BAND system is essentially electricity apartheid, where the wealthy or urban elite are milked with false promises of premium power while the poor are left to self-generate. Yet even the so-called Band A neighborhoods continue to witness load shedding, unexpected blackouts, and transformer failures.
The role of the Nigerian government in this mess cannot be overemphasised. From fraudulent privatisation deals to regulatory laxity, and from budgetary misappropriation to deafening silence in the face of mass extortion, the government has aided and abetted the decline of the energy sector.
Public officials sit on boards of these electricity companies either directly or through proxies. Thus, they are both regulators and beneficiaries. Every tariff hike is justified with promises of service improvement that never materialise. Bills are passed, and subsidies are removed, yet the sector remains comatose.
Despite receiving billions of dollars in intervention funds from the Central Bank of Nigeria, the World Bank, and other donors, the system has only worsened. What should be a national emergency has become a cash cow for elites.
The implications of this dysfunction stretch beyond inconvenience. Small and medium-scale enterprises, SMEs, which account for a significant portion of Nigeria’s economy, are forced to rely on diesel or petrol generators. This drives up operational costs, reduces productivity, and increases inflation. Hospitals, schools, and public infrastructure operate in survival mode. In rural areas, electricity is a myth. For many children, studying under candlelight remains a rite of passage.
Families are psychologically tormented. Parents must explain to their children why they can’t watch television or sleep under a fan. Businesses close early, and entire lives are rearranged around the hope that “NEPA will bring light.”
The social contract is broken, and the people have adapted but at a steep cost to health, economy, and dignity.
The rot in Nigeria’s electricity sector is systemic, and cosmetic tweaks like the band system cannot fix it. What’s needed is a surgical overhaul that prioritises transparency, accountability, and consumer justice.
First, the fraudulent privatisation process must be reviewed. Where necessary, licences should be revoked, and new firms with technical competence and performance-based contracts should be allowed entry.
Second, the metering gap must be closed within a defined, enforceable timeline. The must be immediate rollout of free prepaid meters for all households. No Nigerian should be subjected to estimated billing after 2025. Technology exists to achieve this if political will is present.
Third, the transmission grid still under government control must be expanded and modernised. Without this, even increased generation will mean little.
Fourth, the regulatory bodies, NERC, REA, etc., must be made independent of political and business influence. Their primary allegiance should be to the consumer, not the cartel.
And finally, the current band system, a misnomer of progress, should be disbanded. No tariff regime should precede service delivery. Nigerians should not be made to pay in advance for darkness. Transparent reclassification of all consumers based on independently verifiable service data. Reversal of all tariffs imposed on falsely classified Band A consumers.
Nigeria cannot develop in darkness. The current trajectory is unsustainable. If electricity remains a privilege for the few instead of a right for all, the social contract will continue to erode.
Nigeria’s electricity crisis is not an accident of fate. It is a product of greed, corruption, and leadership failure. Countries with less potential have achieved energy sufficiency through vision, planning, and execution. That Nigeria, the so-called giant of Africa, remains tethered to darkness is not just a national embarrassment; it is a betrayal of its people.
We are not short on ideas or resources. We are short on justice, sincerity, and courage. And until we summon the will to dismantle the BANDits of darkness, both literal and metaphorical , we will remain a nation groping in the shadows, paying premium for power that never comes.