Adelabu claimed that when he became minister, the power sector had almost no guidance.

“The last policy for the sector was about 20 years ago,” Adelabu said, noting that the national integrated electricity policy, released in February 2025, would transform the sector.

Before 2025, the power sector had several policies. These included the Nigeria electric power policy in 2001, which kicked off major reforms, and the national energy policy in 2003. 

Within the last two decades, several other plans have been introduced, including the 2010 power sector roadmap, the national renewable energy and energy efficiency policy in 2015 and the rural electrification strategy in 2016. It’s misleading to suggest that there were no policies to guide the sector for 20 years.

The minister’s claim suggests that 62.5% of the population has electricity. But there are a number of issues with the data.

Nigeria hasn’t had a census since 2006, and population estimates differ. For example, the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) put the population at 176.4-million in 2014, rising to 216.7-million in 2022. 

The World Bank estimated that the population would be 227.89-million in 2023. 

The most recent data, a 2024 household survey by the World Bank and NBS, found that only about half of Nigerian households had access to electricity, with a national average of 53.6%. The survey didn’t say how many people this covered.

We have asked the minister’s office for his data. In the absence of this, we rate the claim as unproven.

In 2024, Nigeria's electricity regulator approved a price increase for Band A consumers from N66 to N225 per kilowatt-hour. 

Band A is the highest tier, typically associated with customers receiving 20-24 hours of electricity supply daily.

The rate was later reduced to N206.8 and then raised to N209.5 in July. 

Adelabu attributed the revenue increment in 2024 to the tariff hike.

He was mostly correct – the market for power earned an additional 700-billion (about US$436-million) in 2024, from N1.05 -trillion ($654-million) in 2023 to N1.7--trillion ($1.06-billion) in 2024. 

However, the revenue increase was 61.9%, not 70%, as the minister claimed.

Adelabu claimed that the recent revenue growth in the power sector was unprecedented, saying the highest increase in past years was about 19%. But data shows otherwise.

Data from the statistics bureau shows that in 2021, the power sector collected N761.17-billion (about $474-million), a 44.5% increase from N526.77-billion ($328-million) in 2020 — much higher than 19%.

On 15 February 2024, minister Adelabu announced that Nigeria would spend about N3 -trillion ($1.87-billion) on electricity subsidies that year. But in reality, the government paid N1.94 -trillion ($1.21-billion) in subsidies – about 35% less – because electricity tariffs were increased, reducing the need for subsidies.

In February 2025, the government announced plans to raise tariffs for Band A, B and C customers.

But Prof Ndubisi Akanegbu, an economist at Nile University, said higher electricity prices would hurt the average Nigerian.

“If the disposable income is reduced, the tendency is that they will have less, and it would be difficult for them to buy other things they need to buy in the economy.”

Akanegbu said that higher inflation was another risk. 

In 2024, the International Monetary Fund advised the Nigerian government to remove electricity subsidies to free up money for development and help manage its debt.

Nigeria’s amended constitution and the amended 2023 Electricity Act allows states to manage their own electricity markets, but only after they get approval from the regulator.

According to Mark Nwohu, a professor of electrical power systems at the Federal University of Technology, Minna, the Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission (NERC) still plays a role by overseeing state electricity activities to ensure that they follow national rules. 

So far 11 states – Enugu, Ekiti, Ondo, Imo, Oyo, Edo, Kogi, Lagos, Ogun, Niger and Plateau – have gained regulatory control, each at different times from 2024 to 2025.

Nerc has told the remaining 25 states to take full regulatory control over their electricity markets by July 2025.

Adelabu claimed that Nigeria reached a record available power generation of 6 003 megawatts in March 2025, the highest ever.

Prof Nwohu explained that it's important to understand the terms. 

“Available generation capacity may include inactive generating capacity not put to use. However, peak or maximum generation capacity is the maximum power output generated from active generating capacity.”

The Nigeria Electricity System Operator (Neso) tracks power operations. However, its daily operational data does not include information on available power generation. We were therefore unable to independently verify the minister’s figure.

Nwohu said the minister should focus instead on the country's maximum power output.

At the time of the minister’s claim, the highest peak generation capacity recorded was 5 801.84 megawatts.

According to Neso’s daily report, Nigeria’s highest-ever power generation was 5 801.839 megawatts. The Transmission Company of Nigeria (TCN) said this happened on 4 March 2025.

According to Neso’s daily reports, the maximum daily energy attained is 128 370.75 megawatt hours, which supports Adelabu’s claim.

In 2019, the TCN, announcing a then record achievement of 110 724 MWh, explained that this figure refers to the total energy sent from power plants to distribution centres across the country in one full day.

There is no NERC report yet for the first quarter of 2025, so we can’t confirm the average daily power generated during that time. But in the last quarter of 2024, the average daily generation was 5 296.89 megawatts – below 5 700 megawatts.

When Adelabu took office in the third quarter of 2023, it was 4 211.44 megawatts, more than 4 100 megawatts.

Africa Check couldn’t find credible reports or public documentation of what Nigeria achieved in 1984.

Reports from 2012 said Nigeria generated 4 000 megawatts of power. In 2013, the Transmission Company of Nigeria also reported that generation stayed between 3 800 and 4 000 megawatts.

Nigeria reached 4 000 megawatts before 2016. If the country had 2 000 megawatts in 1984, as the minister claimed, it took 28 years to double that to 4 000 megawatts.

When Adelabu took office in the third quarter of 2023, Nigeria’s available power generation capacity was 4 211.44 megawatts – above 4 100 MW.

The Nigerian Independent System Operator recorded the country’s highest-ever peak generation at 5 801.84 megawatts on 4 March 2025.

We couldn't find an official list of all 33 companies. Africa Check contacted the association of power generation companies in Nigeria, but got no reply.

The association's website lists only 13 companies. In its fourth-quarter report for 2024, NERC lists 30 generating companies with 28 actively generating power. 

Prof Nwohu said he was not familiar with privately owned power-generating companies but estimated there were fewer than 33 active ones.

In the absence of conclusive data, the claim remains unproven.

Nigeria’s national grid is the system that carries electricity across the country, and it's run by the TCN. 

In 2024, the grid experienced several disruptions or “disturbances”. 

Adelabu said that adding 700 megawatts to the grid didn't cause a major disturbance between January and April 2025.

But we found several reports of grid collapses during that time, although TCN denied them. For example on 15 February, TCN said a planned outage on the Benin-Egbin line led to supply loss in parts of Abuja, Lagos and Osogbo.

In January and March, TCN blamed similar outages on line tripping and not grid collapse. Still, these incidents caused blackouts in parts of the country. 

In Nigeria, being “metered” means your electricity use is measured with a device that tracks how much power you use in kilowatt-hours. This information is then used to calculate your bill.

 As of 30 September 2024, only 6 156 726 customers of the 13 339 635 registered electricity customers (46.15%) across the 12 distribution companies in Nigeria had meters.

The National Council on Privatisation (NCP) formulates and approves policies for the privatisation and commercialisation of public enterprises.

We didn’t find an NCP report for any meeting in 2025. But Nigerian vice president Kashim Shettima and Adelabu attended a meeting in December 2024.

Prof Nwohu said that when comparing countries' power generation, factors like economic development, population, energy resources and level of industrialisation should be considered.

A 2003 official report said that Nigeria's total installed generation capacity was 6 422 megawatts, while available generation hovered around 4,902 megawatts. However, because of equipment issues, only about 3 300 to 3 500 megawatts were produced that year.

We couldn’t find historical data for Bangladesh and Egypt for the same year.

But Nwohu said that it's unlikely for three countries to have the same power capacity unless their conditions are exactly alike. “It’s rare to have such a scenario in real-world terms. Very rare.”

“Anyone who will argue that three or more countries can have that at the same time, that person should be able to convince us that the indices are the same [at the same time].”

According to the Egyptian Electricity Holding Company’s 2022 to 2023 report, the country had an installed power generation capacity of 59 442.18 megawatts, with 58 713.25 megawatts actually available. The highest electricity demand (peak load) was 34 200 megawatts in August 2022.

During the same period, Bangladesh added 3 149 megawatts of new capacity, bringing its total generation capacity to 24 911 megawatts. The highest amount of electricity generated was 15 648 megawatts.

Neither country has released official reports covering 2023 to 2024 yet.

Adelabu’s claim matches the World Bank’s estimate that nearly 600-million people in sub-Saharan Africa don’t have electricity.

To address this, the development lender has launched “Mission 300”, aiming to connect 300-million people to electricity by 2030.