Peter Uzoho
Approximately 85 million Nigerians currently live without electricity access, with over 2,500 megawatts of available generation wasted daily because the grid cannot evacuate it, the Association of Power Generation Companies (APGC) has said.
Chief Executive Officer of APGC, Dr. Joy Ogaji, told THISDAY that the numbers paint a damning picture of a sector producing power that never reaches homes and businesses.
“Nigeria’s stranded power crisis is a transmission failure, not a generation failure,” Ogaji said. “The country has an installed capacity of over 15,500MW, yet the grid can only wheel around 4,500MW. That gap is where the crisis lives,” she added.
According to the APGC, stranded or unutilised generation capacity runs between 2,500 MW and 4,000 MW, with declared stranded capacity averaging 150 MW to 400 MW daily. This is power that has been generated or is ready to be generated but cannot be delivered because transmission infrastructure is either absent or has broken down.
As of December 2025, THISDAY’s checks showed that 2,275.67 MW of available generation sat wasted and undelivered, the highest level in five years and equivalent to 33.6 percent of available generation going nowhere.
The trend has been consistent as data shows 2,248 MW was stranded in 2021, 1,816 MW in 2022, 2,227 MW in 2023, 2,180 MW in 2024, and 2,275 MW in 2025.
The human cost is immediate when viewed from the prism of hospitals having to run on generators, students studying by candlelight, and small businesses bleeding cash on fuel.
Between 2000 and 2022 alone, Nigeria’s national grid collapsed 564 times, according to APGC records, more than twice a month for over two decades.
In January 2026, the country suffered three nationwide blackouts in 30 days. On January 27, 2026, grid output fell from 3,825 MW at 10am to 39 MW by 11am. At that time, within one hour, 99 per cent of Nigeria’s electricity vanished as every distribution zone fell to zero simultaneously.
It is estimated that Nigerian businesses and households spend an estimated $23 billion annually on diesel and petrol to self-generate power across about 22 million generators. The World Bank puts the broader economic loss from unreliable electricity at $26 billion to $29 billion per year.
Similarly, the African Development Bank’s (AfDB) African Economic Outlook 2026 estimates outages cost firms 3 per cent of annual sales, with 70.7 per cent of Nigerian businesses forced to own or share generators.
“A small tailor earning N4,000 a day can spend N3,000 of it on generator fuel,” Ogaji said. “Banks report diesel at 20 to 30 percent of operating expenses. Every megawatt stranded is a business struggling or failing to survive.”
On the revenue side, the electricity market itself is hemorrhaging. The Nigerian Independent System Operator (NISO) estimated that transmission inefficiencies cost the sector approximately N5 billion daily. Distribution Companies (Discos) recorded combined losses of N2.349 trillion over the past two years from billing and collection inefficiencies, rising from N1.015 trillion in 2024 to N1.334 trillion in 2025.
For Gencos, the pain is acute as they lost an estimated N2.28 trillion in capacity payments in 2025 alone due to grid constraints that prevented evacuation.
That figure excludes energy charge losses. Sector debt to Gencos has now exceeded N6.8 trillion and is projected to rise another 33 per cent by end-2026.
Ogaji said: “Gencos are effectively maintaining and operating assets for a market that cannot pay them. These losses cascade. Gencos cannot pay gas suppliers. Transmission Company of Nigeria (TCN) loses wheeling revenue. Discos cannot fund network upgrades. Nigeria Bulk Electricity Trader (NBET)’s payment gaps widen. The entire value chain is caught in the same spiral.”
She insisted that Gencos were not the problem arguing that gas supply to thermal plants has fallen to under 43 per cent of daily requirement. She added that pipeline vandalism destroyed 128 transmission towers in 2024 alone while unpaid gas invoices have also left plants unable to run at capacity.
Among stakeholders, the transmission bottleneck remains the biggest chokepoint, as they argue that installed capacity of 15,500 MW far exceeds the 4,500 MW the grid can wheel. They say technical losses alone run at 1,200 MW to 1,300 MW daily, enough to power Lagos. According to APGC, liquidity is equally dire, saying starved of payment, Gencos cannot fund maintenance or buy parts. At distribution level, billing gaps, metering failures and energy theft mean that Discos lose billions before revenue reaches the market. The utility firms’ Aggregate Technical, Commercial and Collection (ATC&C) losses run at about 50 percent, against a global best practice of 15 percent.
Ogaji said the solutions were known but require urgency as APGC is calling for the privatisation or commercialisation of the TCN to inject private capital, similar to Egypt’s addition of 14,000 MW in six years.
