By Isaac Anumihe, Abuja
In a bold effort to end the recurring collapse of the national electricity grid, the federal government has commenced a comprehensive digitisation of Nigeria’s power supply system, marking a strategic shift towards a more stable, transparent, and responsive energy infrastructure.
Speaking at the unveiling of the new logo of the Nigerian Independent System Operator (NISO) in Abuja, Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer, Abdu Bello Mohammad, said the country is now taking decisive steps to modernise its electricity grid operations and integrate more fully with the West African Power Pool (WAPP).
Mohammad noted that although Nigeria was among the founding nations of the WAPP—a cooperative of national electricity companies in West Africa aimed at creating a unified regional electricity market—other countries had advanced while Nigeria lagged behind. That, he said, is now changing.
“NISO did not emerge from thin air,” he stated. “It was born out of reform mandated by law and driven by a national imperative for transparency, neutrality, and reliability in grid operations and electricity market coordination.”
The transition follows the enactment of the Electricity Act 2023, which repealed the Electric Power Sector Reform Act (EPSRA) of 2005. According to Mohammad, this landmark legislation did more than revise existing rules—it restructured the power sector.
“The Electricity Act 2023 did not just change the rules, it changed the structure,” he explained. “And in that structure, the Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission (NERC) took a bold and necessary step to ring-fence the Independent System Operator (ISO) functions from the Transmission Company of Nigeria (TCN) and birth a fully independent system operator. A system operator with a name, a face, and a mission of its own.”
NISO, now formally separated from TCN, has assumed a central role in managing Nigeria’s grid operations, and the organisation is embracing this responsibility with a new sense of purpose.
“We are engaging stakeholders with a fresh posture. We are no longer an appendage; we are a principal actor, and we now sit at the table with the authority of our mandate and the clarity of our purpose,” Mohammad asserted.
He further announced NISO’s increased global engagement, particularly with regional partners like WAPP, where Nigeria aims to become more than just an observer. “We intend to deepen our participation globally… We contribute not just as observers, but as allies in regional electricity planning.”
The MD highlighted the agency’s ongoing on-site supervision of key infrastructure such as the Gwagwalada and Katampe substations, including its oversight of the Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) project, as evidence of a leadership team unwilling to rely on “boardroom assumptions.”
Importantly, NISO has launched a major digitisation and automation initiative in collaboration with global tech giant Huawei. “We have commenced the digitisation and automation initiative, in partnership with global technology leaders, Huawei. This will give us real-time system visibility, smart data analytics, and modern SCADA infrastructure,” he said. “Let me put it simply: this is the kind of progress that turns institutions from reactive to proactive.”
Unveiling the agency’s logo, Mohammad explained that its design is a symbolic reflection of the organisation’s mission. “Our logo represents energy flow and balance. It reflects structure. It reflects motion. And above all, it reflects control. The kind of control a system operator must maintain over an increasingly complex power system.”
Reaffirming NISO’s vision, Mohammad said: “Our mission is clear and unambiguous; to manage Nigeria’s electricity grid with reliability, efficiency and transparency, enabling a sustainable and competitive power sector that drives economic growth and improves quality of life.”