Nigeria's electricity sector has swallowed more than $3.6 billion in World Bank funding since 2001. Yet the country still struggles to generate enough power for its 223 million people.
The average Nigerian household faces between 10 and 20 hours of blackouts daily. Africa's most populous nation produces less electricity per capita than some war-torn countries.
Hospitals, factories, and market traders have abandoned hope in the national grid. They now depend on diesel generators that cost Nigeria roughly $25 billion yearly in lost output and fuel expenses.
A quarter-century of reform plans and multilateral loans has left the sector broken, according to energy experts and lawyers. "International money has become a substitute for real structural change, not a tool to enable it," Ayodele Oni, a partner at Bloomfield Law Practice, told BusinessDay.
Oni noted that meaningful reform requires cost-reflective tariffs and a properly funded transmission company. He said these changes matter far more than foreign capital injections.
"Until tariffs and gas prices reflect actual costs, every dollar from outside is just hiding the real problems," he added.
World Bank records show it launched the Transmission Development Project in 2001 with $100 million. The National Energy Development Project followed four years later with $172 million in support.
By 2009, the Nigeria Electricity and Gas Improvement Project arrived with $400 million aimed at boosting generation and gas supply. These constraints had crippled output for decades.
Adetayo Adegbemle, executive director of Powerup Nigeria, said outcomes have fallen drastically short of public expectations. He identified weak monitoring as a major stumbling block for project success.
Loans meant for metering and distribution improvements often lack proper oversight mechanisms. Funds disappear into systems without adequate checks to track their use.
In 2014, the World Bank shifted strategy with a $145 million Guarantees Project. Rather than build infrastructure directly, it offered payment security to power generators losing money to collection failures.
Distributors routinely failed to pay generators or collect cash from customers. Artificially low tariffs, kept down for political reasons, made the entire sector mathematically insolvent.
Adegbemle stressed that independent monitors must oversee all procurement and implementation work. Civil society groups and media outlets should participate in these processes to ensure accountability.
Without external scrutiny, project funds continue leaking into corrupt systems. Reform won't take root until Nigeria tackles the economics that broke the sector in the first place.
