Dr Joachim Ezeji, PhD
Nigeria’s national electricity grid has collapsed again. This latest incident, occurring in January 2026, is the second grid collapse in one month and the second this year, following a nationwide outage on December 29, 2025. As at the time of writing, data showed zero megawatts of electricity supplied to the country’s eleven distribution companies. In a matter of hours, generation reportedly fell from over 4,500 megawatts to virtually zero, as all 23 grid-connected power plants lost output.
While the immediate explanations—technical faults, transmission failures, and generation instability—may be accurate, they are not the real story. These collapses are not random accidents. They are the predictable outcome of systemic failure in asset management.
Electricity infrastructure is among a nation’s most valuable and complex assets. Power plants, transmission lines, substations, and control systems are long-lived, capital-intensive investments that require disciplined planning, operation, maintenance, and renewal over decades. When these assets are poorly managed, failures accumulate silently until the system collapses—often catastrophically.
In Nigeria, grid failures have become so frequent that they are now treated as routine. Maintenance is deferred, investment planning is fragmented, and asset condition data is weak. Decisions are often driven by short-term crisis management rather than long-term stewardship. This is not merely a technical problem; it is a governance and regulatory failure.
Across much of the developed world—and in several emerging economies—electricity utilities are required to adopt formal asset management systems, often aligned with the international ISO 55000 Asset Management Standard. ISO 55000 provides a structured framework for managing infrastructure across its full lifecycle: from planning and financing, through operation and maintenance, to renewal and replacement. Crucially, it links engineering decisions with financial planning, risk management, and service outcomes.
Consider the United Kingdom. Electricity network operators are regulated by Ofgem, which requires utilities to submit detailed, long-term asset management and investment plans under its price control framework. Tariffs are set not simply to keep the lights on today, but to ensure sufficient funding for maintenance, asset renewal, and resilience against future risks, including climate change. Poor asset performance attracts penalties; good stewardship is rewarded.
In Canada, electricity utilities operate under strict provincial regulation, with asset management embedded in utility governance. Long-term asset management plans justify capital investments and maintenance budgets, while regulators ensure that tariffs reflect the true cost of sustaining infrastructure. Reliability targets are explicit, and utilities are held accountable when they fail to meet them.
Even in South Africa, despite well-documented challenges in the power sector, asset management principles are formally recognised within regulatory and utility frameworks. The problem there is not the absence of asset management concepts, but inconsistent execution and governance failures—an important distinction. Nigeria, by contrast, still struggles to treat asset management as a core institutional discipline.
One of the most uncomfortable truths in Nigeria’s electricity debate is the issue of tariff reform. Reliable electricity cannot be delivered on tariffs that do not cover the full lifecycle cost of assets. This does not mean tariffs must be unaffordable, but it does mean they must be cost-reflective, transparent, and linked to service delivery and asset performance. Without this linkage, utilities lack the financial capacity to maintain infrastructure, replace ageing equipment, or invest in resilience.
Regulation must therefore evolve beyond crisis response. Regulators should require utilities to develop and publish credible asset management plans, aligned with ISO 55000 principles, as a condition for tariff approval. Performance-based regulation should tie revenues to reliability,
maintenance, and long-term system health—not just energy delivered. Government, regulators, and consumers must recognise that cheap electricity that collapses repeatedly is not cheap at all; its hidden costs are borne by households, businesses, hospitals, and the wider economy.
Nigeria’s electricity grid is not merely an engineering system. It is a strategic national asset that underpins economic growth, public welfare, and national security. Managing it without a coherent asset management framework is equivalent to running a national economy on borrowed time.
Until Nigeria makes a decisive shift from reactive firefighting to disciplined, standards-based asset management—supported by regulatory reform and realistic tariffs—grid collapses will remain a recurring national embarrassment. The problem is not that Nigeria lacks engineers or infrastructure. The problem is that it lacks a serious commitment to managing its assets for the long term.
Author Bio:
Dr. Joachim Ibeziako Ezeji is a water, energy, and climate resilience expert with over 15 years of experience advising governments and development partners across Africa. He has held senior technical roles with UNDP, USAID, and JICA, and currently leads policy advisory work at the Gulf of Guinea Risk & Resilience Institute.