“By all means necessary, you must have electricity, and you will not pay for an estimated bill anymore,” Tinubu told supporters. “If I don’t keep the promise and I come for a second term don’t vote for me. That is the truth.”
For millions of Nigerians living with darkness, generators and arbitrary billing, the words carried weight. Power supply is not merely an infrastructure issue in Nigeria. It is a daily struggle that defines economic survival. Tinubu’s pledge suggested finality, a break from excuses that had endured across administrations.
Nearly two years after he assumed office in May 2023, the promise remains a benchmark against which his presidency is being measured. For many Nigerians, the scorecard is troubling.
The most immediate shock came not from improved supply but from higher tariffs. Tinubu’s government approved increases in electricity costs, particularly for customers classified as receiving higher levels of service. Officials defended the move as unavoidable. The power sector, they argued, could no longer survive on subsidies that distorted pricing, discouraged investment, and left generation and distribution companies financially crippled.
On the streets, the reform felt lopsided. Consumers were asked to pay more in an economy battered by inflation and currency depreciation, while power supply remained erratic. In many homes, bills rose faster than hours of electricity. The president’s campaign vow, electricity first and payment next, appeared inverted.
More damaging to public confidence has been the continued fragility of the national grid. Since Tinubu took office, Nigeria has experienced multiple grid collapses, each plunging large parts of the country into darkness. These failures, often described by officials as “system disturbances” or “technical faults,” have become routine. Generation drops sharply, transmission fails to stabilize frequency, and recovery takes hours, sometimes days.
Each collapse reinforces a hard truth. Nigeria’s power problem is not just about pricing but about infrastructure that cannot sustain itself. A grid that collapses repeatedly cannot credibly anchor reform, no matter how sound the economic logic behind tariff increases.
Tinubu’s promise to end estimated billing has also collided with reality. Millions of Nigerians remain unmetered and are still subject to arbitrary charges that often bear little resemblance to actual consumption. Estimated billing has long been one of the most bitter grievances in the power sector, breeding distrust between consumers and distribution companies. While the administration has reiterated commitments to mass metering, progress has been slow, constrained by financing gaps, logistics, and weak enforcement.
The result is a contradiction at the heart of the reform agenda. Nigerians are told to pay cost reflective tariffs in a system that still cannot accurately measure what many of them consume.
Structural weaknesses continue to weigh heavily. Distribution companies remain undercapitalized and inefficient. Transmission, still government controlled, lacks the resilience and capacity to evacuate power reliably. Gas supply, the backbone of Nigeria’s electricity generation, is frequently disrupted by vandalism, pricing disputes, and infrastructure deficits. Each problem compounds the next, producing a cycle of failure that no single policy announcement can break.
Supporters of the president argue that Tinubu inherited a broken system decades in the making and that meaningful reform cannot be painless or instant. They point to longer term initiatives such as encouraging state governments to generate and distribute power independently, attracting private investment, and gradually removing distortions that have hollowed out the sector.
But electricity is where patience runs thin. It powers livelihoods, not just balance sheets. When the grid collapses and bills rise, reform sounds theoretical, even punitive.
Tinubu asked Nigerians to judge him by results, not rhetoric. He even tied his political future to the promise, daring voters to reject him if he failed to deliver. For now, that promise hangs in the air, quoted back to him by citizens who still study by candlelight and budget for diesel.
In Nigeria’s long and frustrating electricity story, this administration may yet claim a turning point. Until power is stable, meters replace estimates, and tariffs feel earned rather than imposed, the president’s words will remain what electricity too often is in Nigeria: available in promise, unreliable in practice.
