The committee’s job is to sort out the policy, regulatory, and operational snags coming up as more states take charge of their own electricity markets under the Electricity Act 2023. Already, 16 states have formally taken over their intrastate markets, using powers the Act gives them to regulate generation, transmission, and distribution once they meet the Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission’s requirements.
Minister of Power Adebayo Adelabu inaugurated the committee at a workshop in Abuja focused on aligning legal and regulatory approaches between federal and state institutions. He said the goal was straightforward: keep coordination tight as the country moves toward a decentralised electricity market.
The Ministry of Power organised the workshop jointly with NERC.
Adelabu, who will chair the new committee, said its mandate is to keep stakeholders talking, iron out implementation snags, and help the Electricity Act roll out smoothly. He’s given the committee four weeks to dig into the issues raised at the workshop, talk to the relevant parties, and hand government a set of practical recommendations.
He called Nigeria’s move to a decentralised electricity market one of the biggest reforms the power sector has seen in decades.
“Its success will depend not on institutional competition, but on collaboration, regulatory certainty and our shared commitment to delivering better outcomes for Nigerians. We must make the Nigerian Electricity Supply Industry succeed,” he said.
For Adelabu, electricity isn’t just infrastructure — it’s the backbone of everything else. Manufacturing, agriculture, mining, banking, telecoms, tech: none of it runs without stable power, and industrialisation and job creation depend on getting this right.
He was careful to frame decentralisation as something other than a break-up of the sector. It’s a redistribution of responsibility, he said, not fragmentation — states taking on more within one national framework, not the framework splitting apart.
He also pointed to the cooperation he saw at the workshop as a good sign — proof, in his view, that the reforms have the institutional backing they’ll need to actually work. Getting this right, he added, will take ongoing back-and-forth between federal government, state governments, and regulators, all working toward a market that’s modern, efficient, and worth investing in.
Industry watchers say the Electricity Act 2023 has already reshaped the sector by handing states real regulatory authority — and with that, new room for private investment, competition, and innovation in how power gets generated and distributed. Done right, analysts argue, these reforms could widen electricity access, tighten up efficiency, and chip away at the power shortages that have held back Nigeria’s economy for decades.
With this committee now in place, the Federal Government is betting that a more coordinated transition — one with clearer rules and less regulatory guesswork — will be enough to pull in fresh investment and give businesses and households the reliable power they’ve been waiting for.
