The National Integrated Electricity Policy of Nigeria: A review (part one)

The unveiling of the “National Integrated Electricity Policy” by the Federal Ministry of Power (MoP) marked a significant milestone in public policy making for the Nigerian power sector. The document represents a major policy review and update of the “National Electric Power Policy 2001”, long overdue for review. It is an 84-page comprehensive policy document comprising eight chapters which addressed diverse issues in the Nigerian Electricity Supply Industry (NESI), ranging from technical, infrastructural, market design and climate change issues to human resources, gender issues and legal matters.

My article of March 10, 2025, titled “Nigeria’s Energy Compact: Looking beyond Mission-300”, erroneously referred to the “National Integrated Electricity Policy” officially unveiled on February 28, 2025, as the “Nigeria Integrated Energy Plan”, which is regretted. However, there is indeed a “Nigeria Integrated Energy Plan (NIEP 2022).” It is “a geospatial model for universal electrification of Nigeria”. What this means is that the document identifies the number of households that are electrified and that are not electrified and their locations – or indeed the application of geographical information system (GIS) to the electricity landscape in Nigeria. Its production was powered by Sustainable Energy for All (SEforALL), in partnership with the Rockefeller Foundation and the Global Energy Alliance for People and Planet. SEforALL is an international organisation that is promoting the achievement of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal 7 (SDG7), which is to ‘ensure access to affordable, reliable, sustainable and modern energy for all’ by 2030. The NIEP 2022 geospatial model was able to determine by 2022 that 60% of the population in Nigeria was electrified, with 15.3 million households without access, a number that is expected to grow to 19.3 million households by 2030. SEforALL globally promotes an ‘Integrated Energy Plan (IEP) template that will deliver a ‘least-cost technology mix’ to provide universal access globally to all un-electrified households by 2030. This technology mix comprises grid connections, mini-grid connections, mostly through distributed renewable energy (DRE) and solar house systems (SHS). The document also revealed that Nigeria made a (nominal) commitment to achieving SDG7 as far back as 2019, as reflected in Nigeria’s Energy Compact document, which, as is now agreed, is not realisable. So, it is not an error of judgement of the current administration.

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While the ‘Nigeria Integrated Energy Plan (NIEP 2022)’ is a sustainable energy development model to achieve SDG7 in Nigeria, the ‘National Integrated Electrification Policy’ is a revised, updated and comprehensive policy framework to drive the electrification of Nigeria for “the foreseeable future” or, more realistically, for about five to ten years. The new national electricity policy framework is the product of extensive consultations. Section 3 of the new Electricity Act 2023 required that the National Electric Power Policy 2001 be reviewed within one year after the new Act came into effect. In compliance, the Federal Minister of Power organised a 3-day ministerial retreat from December 12 to 14, 2023, where key issues were extensively deliberated upon. This was followed on May 16 – 17, 2024, by groundbreaking stakeholders’ consultations among ministers, senior government officials at the federal and state levels, industry experts, financiers, licensed operators, investors, consumer groups, gas suppliers, and international advisors, among others. The event was titled “Charting a Sustainable Future through the National Electricity Policy Dialogue”. The critical role of the African Development Bank and the United Kingdom (UK) Nigeria Infrastructure Advisory Facility (UKNIAF) and other international development partners in facilitating the policy dialogue and the eventual preparation of the policy document ought to be noted. In fact, UKNIAF was the enabling spirit behind the whole process right from the ministerial retreat in December 2023, and they provided the technical assistance and advisory support that guided the preparation and delivery of the final policy document.

 “This technology mix comprises grid connections, mini-grid connections, mostly through distributed renewable energy (DRE) and solar house systems (SHS).”

From the foregoing it can be seen that the ‘Nigeria Integrated Electricity Policy’ approximates the best that can be expected from diverse stakeholder contributions. It is an eight-chapter, 84-page-long document, but I will limit myself to the first three chapters so as to give some attention to the core technical and business issues addressed in the policy document. Chapter one traces the evolution of electricity policy in Nigeria since 2001, specifically reviewing the National Electric Power Policy 2001 and the repealed Electric Power Sector Reform Act (EPSRA) 2005, which were anchored on privatisation, leading eventually to the enactment of the Electricity Act 2023. After reviewing the privatisation of the existing power-generating companies and the partial privatisation of eleven distribution companies, chapter one, section 1.1.3 of the National Integrated Electricity Policy (2025) stated thus: “However, it is now accepted that privatisation of the generation and distribution sub-sectors, the cornerstone of the NEPP 2001 and the EPSRA 2005, has not yielded its intended benefits. Despite significant changes in ownership structure, the expected transformation in the Nigerian electricity sector remains unfulfilled. While it is apparent that the generation sub-sector has seen a certain level of investment, the necessary upgrades and expansions to improve service delivery and reliability in the transmission and distribution sectors have not materialised, leaving many parts of Nigeria with inadequate and unreliable power supply, leading to the increasingly common use of the phrase “unserved and underserved parts of…” This statement will need to be interrogated, as it is doubtful if it is evidence-based.

Chapter 2 is titled “Nigeria’s Electricity Policy Objectives”. The three key objectives are healthy capitalisation, universal access, and electricity reliability. Healthy capitalisation is the ability of investors and operators in the power sector to finance their operations, including capital investments – both from their operating surpluses and access to capital from the financial markets. Universal access is the attainment of 100 percent electricity connection by all residents in Nigeria through grid and off-grid channels. Electricity reliability can simply be interpreted to mean – setting aside the technical definition in the policy document – a high-quality and uninterrupted supply of electricity to consumers.

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Chapter 3 is titled “The Electricity Market Design, Value Chain, Key Stakeholders and Their Roles”. This chapter addresses the complexities of the evolving Nigerian electricity supply market, first beginning with the plan to transform the Nigerian Bulk Electricity Trader Plc (NBET) into an energy exchange, the creation of State Electricity Markets (SEMs) regulated by state governments side by side with the National Wholesale Electricity Market (NWEM) regulated by the Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission (NERC); and then the off-grid markets, largely for renewable energy, which are generally under the purview of the Rural Electricity Agency (REA).

Chapter 4, titled “Climate Change, Nigeria’s Low Carbon Economy and the Energy Transition”, is very important, but I decided to limit this review to the first three chapters that deal more directly with current technical and operational challenges of the Nigerian power sector. The preparation of the National Integrated Electricity Policy represented a huge task with extensive consultations and technical input. Sufficient justice cannot be done to it in a brief review.

Mr Igbinoba is Team Lead/CEO at ProServe Options Consulting, Lagos