Nigeria’s Power Privatisation Leaves Electricity Unreliable 13 Years On

What changed

Nigeria’s Federal Government transferred the country’s generation and distribution companies to private owners on 1 November 2013. The privatisation promised stable electricity supply and private investment, but thirteen years later, unreliable access to power remains the central problem.

Why it matters

Privatisation changed who operated Nigeria’s electricity system, not the basic experience of many users: the lights still cannot be counted on. That makes the handover look less like a completed reform than an unfinished bargain between government, private companies and the people who depend on electricity.

The important question now is not whether ownership changed. It is whether private control produced the promised improvement. On the information available, that gap remains open, and the lack of quantified figures on reliability, investment and consumer costs leaves the scale of the failure unclear.