Nigeria’s power sector: The goose that eats the fattest but lays no egg

    Edem Dorothy Ossai | YSOT | Apr 21, 2026    
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Since the return to democracy in 1999, Nigeria’s power sector has absorbed staggering levels of public expenditure, repeatedly framed as decisive reform. Each intervention has been presented as the long-awaited solution to a persistent national crisis. However, taken together, these efforts reveal a troubling pattern: a sector that consumes extraordinary public resources without delivering commensurate public value. Nigeria’s power sector is exactly like the proverbial greedy, fat but ultimately barren goose, steadily consuming vast fiscal nourishment while producing neither stability nor sufficiency in electricity supply.

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