Why Nigeria's power gets lost before the socket

When people talk about Nigeria's power, they often quote the size of its power plants. Nigeria has roughly 13,000 MW of installed generation capacity. But the national grid has typically delivered only a fraction of that, often somewhere around 4,000–5,000 MW, for a country of over 200 million people.

Installed capacity is what power plants could produce on paper. What matters to a shop or a home is what arrives at the socket.

Where the power gets lost

The gap between the plant and the socket has three main causes.

1. Fuel supply. Most of Nigeria's plants run on gas. Pipeline problems and unpaid debts along the gas supply chain mean many plants can't run at full output.
2. Transmission limits. The high-voltage network that carries power across the country can't move all the electricity that could be generated, and it is prone to faults.
3. Distribution losses. Distribution companies (DisCos) lose a large share of the power they receive to old equipment, theft and bills that are never paid.

Who pays the price

The World Bank estimates that about 85 million Nigerians have no access to grid electricity. Millions more are connected but get only a few hours of supply a day. To fill the gap, households and small businesses run petrol and diesel generators, which are noisy, polluting and expensive to run.

Why extending the grid isn't enough

Running high-voltage lines across long distances to reach small, spread-out rural communities is expensive, and some power is lost along the way. For a distribution company, those communities often rank last for investment because they use less power and are costly to serve.

That is why distributed power matters. Instead of waiting for the national grid, a mini-grid generates and stores electricity right where it is used, usually from solar panels and batteries, and delivers it through local wires.