The conviction of former Power Minister Saleh Mamman over the alleged diversion of ₦33.8 billion is not merely another corruption headline in Nigeria’s endless archive of public sector scandals. It is a brutal indictment of a power sector governance model that has consistently rewarded bureaucracy, political patronage, and waste while ordinary Nigerians remain trapped in darkness.
For decades, successive governments have poured trillions of naira into the electricity sector through intervention funds, subsidies, rehabilitation projects, transmission upgrades, and ministerial programmes. Yet the result remains painfully familiar: epileptic supply, collapsing grid systems, struggling DisCos, abandoned projects, and industries forced to spend fortunes on diesel generators just to survive.
At some point, the country must ask an uncomfortable but necessary question: why does government continue handing enormous public funds to ministries and agencies that repeatedly fail to deliver measurable electricity outcomes?
Nigeria’s power crisis is no longer fundamentally a funding problem. It is a structural and governance problem.
The latest scandal surrounding the former minister only reinforces what many Nigerians already suspect massive state-controlled funding pipelines in the power sector often become channels for inefficiency, political rent-seeking, inflated contracts, and outright corruption. When billions disappear while national generation remains stagnant, confidence in centralized government-led electricity expansion naturally collapses.
Perhaps the clearest evidence that a different model may work is emerging from the private sector itself.
Africa’s richest businessman, Aliko Dangote, appears to have reached a conclusion many manufacturers arrived at long ago: relying on the national grid is simply too risky for industrial survival. Reports surrounding plans linked to the Dangote Group to generate up to 20,000 megawatts represent more than corporate ambition. It is a vote of no confidence in the state’s ability to guarantee stable electricity.
And frankly, who can blame him?
Large-scale investors cannot build globally competitive industries while depending on unstable public infrastructure. Factories cannot operate efficiently when power supply disappears without warning. Hospitals cannot rely on darkness. Data centres cannot function on hope. Modern economies are powered by reliable electricity, not ministerial press conferences.
This is why Nigeria must urgently rethink the role of government in the electricity sector.
Instead of continuously pouring public money into ministries and politically managed intervention schemes, government should redirect those resources into transparent, performance-based financing mechanisms for credible private investors willing to generate and distribute power.
The state should become an enabler, not an operator.
Imagine a system where government-backed energy funds are structured as low-interest infrastructure loans accessible only to investors that meet strict technical, financial, and operational benchmarks. Funds would be released in phases tied directly to verified megawatts delivered to the grid or consumers. Failure to perform would trigger penalties and loan recovery mechanisms.
That approach would achieve several things simultaneously:
First, it would drastically reduce opportunities for corruption because money would no longer disappear into vague bureaucratic channels with weak accountability.
Second, it would encourage serious investors with proven capacity rather than politically connected contractors chasing inflated projects.
Third, it would accelerate decentralized electricity generation across industrial clusters, states, and economic zones instead of waiting endlessly for centralized federal solutions.
Most importantly, it would align incentives with actual performance. Investors only succeed when electricity is produced and delivered consistently.
The painful reality is that many government-led power interventions in Nigeria have produced more headlines than electricity. From failed transmission upgrades to endlessly rehabilitated power assets, the country has spent enormous sums with little transformational impact.
Even worse, ministers often become symbolic figures presiding over recurring failure while citizens and businesses absorb the economic pain.
Nigeria cannot continue recycling the same approach and expecting different outcomes.
The era of blindly allocating massive public funds to power ministries without strict productivity metrics must end. The government’s responsibility should focus on regulation, policy stability, transmission modernization, security of infrastructure, and creating an investment climate attractive enough for large-scale private generation projects to thrive.
Countries that solved electricity problems did not do so by endlessly politicizing power supply. They solved them by creating systems where competent operators could invest, compete, generate, and expand efficiently under strong regulation.
Nigeria already has entrepreneurs capable of transforming the sector. The problem is that many serious investors face regulatory bottlenecks, tariff uncertainty, currency instability, transmission constraints, and inconsistent policy implementation.
If the federal government redirected even a fraction of wasted intervention funds into disciplined private-sector financing, the results could be transformative.
The truth is simple: Nigerians do not care who generates the electricity. They care that the lights stay on.
