Minister of Power, Adebayo Adelabu, says Nigeria must invest at least $10 billion annually for the next 20 years to achieve stable and reliable electricity nationwide.
He made the statement on Tuesday, May 13, during the commissioning of a 2.5 megawatt solar hybrid power plant at the Nigerian Defence Academy (NDA) in Kaduna.
Adelabu said decades of neglect have left the country with a deep infrastructure deficit in the power sector. He pointed to poor maintenance, low investment, and outdated transmission systems as major contributors to Nigeria’s electricity problems.
“For us to achieve functional, reliable, and stable electricity in Nigeria, we need at least $10 billion annually for the next 20 years,” he said.
“But there is some foundational bottleneck that we experienced in the past that needs to be fixed for the spending of this money to have meaning.”
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He said the Bola Tinubu administration is working to resolve these long-standing issues, especially by prioritising stable power for key national institutions like the NDA.
The minister also highlighted a key policy reform, the signing of the electricity bill into law, which now allows federal, state, and local governments to participate fully in the power sector.
“This bill has achieved liberation and decentralisation of the power sector to enable all levels of government, federal, state, and local governments, to legally and morally play roles in the power sector to give their citizens at sub-national levels electricity,” he said.
“This act has given autonomy to more than 11 states, and more are still coming. They can now play roles in the power sector from generation to transmission to distribution and even metering.”
Adelabu concluded by stressing the importance of fixing the long-standing infrastructure gap.
“We talk about infrastructure deficit, then we talk about fixing infrastructure deficit, which has piled up over the last 60 years due to lack of maintenance, lack of additional investment to revive our transmission grid,” he added.