Just like in politics and other spheres, one of the issues killing the Nigerian power sector is centralization.
For instance, Nigeria has a grid system in that the power generating companies generate electricity into, before electricity is then shared among the distribution companies through the transmission system.
Many watchers have said that the Nigerian power supply system could have grown much faster if the grid system has been broken down into many units instead of one and geo[1]political zones, through collaboration with the private sector, are allowed to have their own grids within which they supply electricity to their zones.
Up till today, the power grid system, run by the Transmission Company of Nigeria, is still in dire need of huge investments and there are strong doubts that the country could be able to raise the billions of naira needed to modernize the transmission system.
The reality is that if the power generating companies generate more than 4,000 megawatts, the transmission system may be unable to move that quantity to the distribution companies.
Thus, because of the bottlenecks everywhere in the power supply chain, the nation of 200 million people has been unable to generate more than a peak of 5,000 megawatts, which is a far cry from what is needed to run a 21st Century economy.
However, even the Buhari government, just like its predecessors, has been unable to set the sector on the pathway to success as it has been scratching the surface of the problems for almost seven years. Thus, although serious efforts have been made to improve metering, the distribution companies are too weak and hobbled by huge debts to make serious investments into their networks.
So, with a transmission system limiting the power generation because of its inadequate wheeling capacity and the privatized distribution companies given to ill prepared companies who have been focused on repaying loans rather than investing in networks, the nation’s power sector has been unable to make much headway.
Thus, it is believed that if states are encouraged to collaborate with the private sector to generate electricity and each geo-political zone sets up grid systems, the industry may be able to develop faster through the Public[1]Private Partnership model.