Nigeria has once again set its sights on 6,000MW of electricity generation by December 2026, with Power Minister Joseph Tegbe saying the country should be able to “wheel comfortably” that amount onto the national grid. The target was announced as the government commissioned upgrades at the Ijora and Apapa Road transmission substations in Lagos, adding 208MW of wheeling capacity. But the 6,000MW ambition is not new. A similar target was set under former Power Minister Adebayo Adelabu and was not achieved, with actual grid output generally remaining between 3,800MW and 4,800MW.
The biggest obstacle remains gas supply. Nigeria relies heavily on gas-fired power plants, yet many generators cannot operate at full capacity because of unreliable gas supplies, pipeline vandalism and commercial disputes between gas producers and power companies. Analysts have also argued for a stronger domestic supply obligation that would reserve sufficient gas for electricity generation rather than allowing supplies to flow to higher-paying markets. Without fixing the gas-to-power chain, increasing transmission capacity alone will not deliver a sustained rise in electricity output.
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Transmission is another major constraint. While the Transmission Company of Nigeria has reported wheeling capacity of around 8,500MW, actual electricity dispatched through the grid is often far lower. The government plans to commission 20 transmission projects before the end of the year to remove bottlenecks and improve system reliability. The upgraded Lagos substations are part of this effort, but the challenge is not simply adding infrastructure, it is ensuring that generation, transmission and distribution can operate together without triggering the instability and grid collapses that have repeatedly disrupted supply.
The country also needs to get more from the power plants it already has. Nigeria has roughly 13,600MW of installed generation capacity, but only a fraction is typically available for dispatch because of gas shortages, maintenance problems and other operational constraints. That means reaching 6,000MW consistently will require rehabilitating existing plants, securing reliable fuel supplies, completing transmission upgrades and attracting private investment into the sector. Nigeria’s challenge, therefore, is not simply to build more power plants; it is to make the entire electricity system capable of reliably converting existing and new capacity into power that actually reaches consumers.
