Power Grid Bottlenecks SINK GenCos as 2,000MW Remains Stranded Daily

Nigeria’s power generation companies (GenCos) have recorded a staggering loss of ₦2.31 Trillion over the past twelve years, a financial catastrophe attributed almost entirely to electricity that was available but could not be delivered to consumers due to the persistent failure of the nation’s transmission and distribution grid.

Fresh data analyzed by the Association of Power Generation Companies (APGC), made public today, Monday, November 3, 2025, reveals the deepening liquidity crisis plaguing the sector since the privatization of the generation segment in 2013. The figure represents lost capacity payments for energy that the plants could produce, but which the fragile national grid cannot evacuate.

For the first nine months of 2025 alone, the losses amounted to ₦119 Billion, with an average of 2,221.99 Megawatts (MW) of generated power being left stranded each month.

The Waste of Available Power

The Minister of Power, Adebayo Adelabu, recently echoed this sentiment, lamenting the “wasteful” nature of the sector and confirming that over 10,000MW of installed capacity is currently lying dormant across the country. He stressed that Nigeria’s immediate problem is not building more plants, but fixing the transmission and distribution bottlenecks.

The APGC highlighted that while GenCos routinely have an available capacity of up to 7,000MW, the maximum that the Transmission Company of Nigeria (TCN) can reliably manage for onward distribution often hovers around 4,500MW. This difference is the stranded power, representing billions in lost revenue for the generating companies.

APGC Managing Director, Joy Ogaji, noted that these capacity losses are separate from the massive outstanding debt of over ₦5.6 Trillion owed to GenCos for the energy they did supply, creating an untenable financial environment that threatens the sustainability of the entire electricity value chain.

The association called on the Federal Government to immediately honor its contractual obligations, guarantee timely and full payment of invoices, and massively invest in strengthening the transmission and distribution infrastructure to unlock this stranded power and stabilize the ailing sector.