The minister revealed plans to increase electricity capacity to 277gw with renewable energy, private investors

Minister of Electric Power, Joseph Tegbe, has unveiled the Federal Government’s plans to increase the country’s installed electricity capacity to 277 Gigawatts (GW) by 2060 by leveraging renewable energy and private sector investment.

He spoke at the Lagos Chamber of Commerce and Industry (LCCI) 2026 Renewable Energy Outlook Conference in Lagos, on Wednesday, and stressed that the country’s energy transition agenda is designed not only to address climate issues but also to address energy poverty, increase industrial productivity and drive economic growth.

The conference, with the theme ‘Strengthening Nigeria’s Energy Transition: Policy, Investment and Industrial Scale Deployment’, brought together policy makers, investors, producers, energy developers and financial institutions to discuss pathways for the transformation of Nigeria’s electricity sector.

Tegbe described Nigeria’s electricity sector as a paradox. He noted that although Nigeria is Africa’s largest and most populous economy with an installed generation capacity of more than 13,000 megawatts, less than half of that capacity can reliably reach consumers.

According to him, the impact is very bad for the business world, because producers spend most of their operational costs to buy diesel and gasoline generators.

“This invisible shadow network, which spends billions of naira annually on imported fuel, is a structural tax on Nigeria’s competitiveness that we can no longer afford,” he said.

He said the disruptions and outages of the national electricity grid recorded in late 2025 and early 2026, which impacted commercial centers, underscored the urgent need for comprehensive reform, and identified the Electricity Law of 2023 as a cornerstone of the sector’s transformation. For the first time, he said, electricity had been removed from the Exclusive Legislative List, which allows states to generate, transmit, distribute and regulate electricity within their territories.

Tegbe revealed that about 20 states have enacted subnational electricity laws, while 12 states have taken over or are progressing the transfer of regulatory oversight from the Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission (NERC). He also highlighted the approval of the National Integrated Electricity Policy (NIEP) by the Federal Executive Council (FEC) in May 2025, which described the policy as a comprehensive replacement for the outdated 2001 electricity policy framework.

According to him, the government has intensified investment in electricity grid infrastructure, installing 82 electricity transformers between 2024 and 2025, increasing transmission capacity by more than 8,500MVA.

He added that more than 30 transmission projects had been completed in the same period, increasing the capacity of the national electricity grid to around 8,700 Megawatts.

Tegbe further revealed that the $1.16 billion power grid digitalization project is now 69 percent complete, with over 3,000 kilometers of fiber optic cables having been installed and over 100 substations upgraded with advanced monitoring systems.

He said the establishment of the Nigerian Independent System Operator (NISO) in 2025 would further strengthen network management and market efficiency.

LCCI President, Leye Kupoluyi, lamented the contradiction between Nigeria’s vast energy resources and persistent electricity deficit. He noted that Nigeria has about 37 trillion cubic feet of proven natural gas reserves and receives an average solar radiation of about 5.5 kilowatt-hours per square meter per day, among the highest globally.

Additionally, the Executive Director of the Rural Electrification Agency (REA), Dr Abba Aliyu, urged stakeholders not to view renewable energy as just a solution to rural electrification, but to position it as a driver of industrial growth and economic transformation.