THE MERGER THAT NEVER WORKED: HISTORICIZING ELECTRICITY FAILURE IN NIGERIA, 1972 – 2005

Abstract

Undoubtedly, electricity has become a major energy source for industrial, commercial and even domestic activities in the modern world. However, in most of the sub-Saharan African countries, including Nigeria, supply-demand gap has remained embarrassingly far too wide. This has left consumers with flickering, epileptic power supply with concomitant underperformance of industries and businesses. This paper traces Nigeria’s electricity ordeal to a decreed merger of the Electricity Corporation of Nigeria (ECN) which was practically in charge of electricity supply in the country, with the Nigeria Dam Authority (NDA), which was in charge of electricity generation in 1972. The merger produced a monopoly called National Electricity Power Authority (NEPA). A historical analysis of NEPA’s performance up to 2005 when the Power Sector Reform Act was passed, vis-a-vis its given task, forms the kernel of this paper. It argues that NEPA, whose ubiquitous poor performance earned it a new satirical description, - ‘Never Expect Power Always,’ was a merger that never really worked. In sync with this thesis, the paper concludes that monopolistic power utility is not just inconsistent with modern best practice, but also a wrong approach to power management. Apart from showing what never worked, the paper also makes case for what will work - further separation of functions in the transmission sub-sector. A historical method, which employs the use of primary and secondary sources of information, is adopted for the study.