An advocacy group, PowerUp Nigeria, has called on the Federal Government to overhaul the national grid.

The Executive Director of PowerUp Nigeria, Adetayo Adegbemle, in a statement, warned that persistent blackouts and power cuts

He argued that the electricity crisis has become a major economic threat due to repeated national grid failures and weak infrastructure,

Adegbemle said, “Let’s dispense with the euphemisms. Nigeria does not have a ‘power supply challenge.’ It has a national grid that has failed at least 222 times between 2010 and 2022, with a dozen more collapses recorded across 2024 and 2025 alone.

“What it actually represents is a market and an infrastructure base that has been allowed to decay for a generation, while successive administrations treated the grid as a line item rather than the strategic asset that determines whether Nigerian industry can compete at all,” he said.

He lamented that the grid’s failure had forced many manufacturers to opt for self-reliant power solutions.

“That exodus is not a footnote; it is the market’s verdict on grid reliability, delivered in the only currency that matters: capital allocation. Manufacturers now spend upward of N45tn annually on diesel, petrol and captive gas generation, money that, redirected into the grid, could have funded the very transmission and stability upgrades the sector needs.“

He urged the government to take a cue from South Africa and Egypt, stating that both countries demonstrated that reliable electricity supply was achievable through sustained reforms, transparency and strong governance.

“What both demonstrate is that grid reliability is a governance output, not a resource endowment, and that Nigeria’s constraint has never primarily been capital or technical know-how but the absence of a sustained, transparently reported turnaround plan that survives changes in political leadership.”

Adegbemle urged the Federal Government to create incentives to encourage industries to reconnect to the national grid, prioritise investment in transmission infrastructure and guarantee the operational independence of the Nigerian Independent System Operator.

“The government must design credible incentives – tariff structures, offtake guarantees, and cross-subsidy mechanisms – that make grid power commercially rational for industrial anchor tenants to return to, rather than continuing to lose them to captive generation by default. Transmission investment and spinning reserve capacity need to be funded and sequenced ahead of, not alongside, renewable energy targets that the current network cannot absorb.”