Power to the people: Why Nigeria’s Jonathan-era privatisation must not be undone

For years, darkness in Nigeria meant more than a lack of electricity. It shaped daily life and reflected a power system that the state owned, ran and repeatedly failed to make work. Bills arrived without reliable supply, while households turned to generators and treated “up NEPA” as a prayer rather than a plan.

The article places a decisive break in 2013, when President Goodluck Ebele Jonathan’s administration privatized power generation and distribution. The government dismantled the structure known as NEPA and PHCN and transferred operations to private hands. The argument is direct: privatization did not fail. It began Nigeria’s first serious power-sector story based on risk, capital and private responsibility.

Before the sale, the system suffered from weak incentives to collect revenue, maintain plants or invest. Vandalism and losses had become routine. The article says the problem was not a lack of gas or turbines, but a structure that functioned as bureaucracy rather than business.

It also rejects claims that the process was a backroom arrangement. Through the Bureau of Public Enterprises and the National Council on Privatisation, the Jonathan administration ran what the article calls one of Nigeria’s most transparent asset sales. Bidders were assessed on capacity, financial strength, technical plans and their ability to pay.

The article points to Dangote Group as evidence. Africa’s largest conglomerate arrived five minutes late to the bidding process and was excluded, with no exception made. That example, it says, showed that the process did not bend for a powerful company. The firms that won were those able to demonstrate money, expertise and a willingness to take on the country’s most difficult infrastructure problem.

The article’s central warning is aimed at any attempt to reverse that model. The GENCOS, it says, are investors rather than government insiders. They committed real money, and the debate over Nigeria’s electricity future should recognize that contribution rather than return the country to a system where darkness had effectively become policy.