In October 1991, a boldly headlined story appeared in TELL magazine one of Nigeria's most respected newsweeklies of that era. The headline read: "A Light in NEPA's Tunnel?" Beneath it, a subheading carried a promise that would echo through the decades: "With billions of naira in grants and loans in its kitty, the never-do-well NEPA promises to rehabilitate its plants and transformers and thus ensure steady power supply by 1992. But will it?"
NEPA the National Electric Power Authority had raised over ₦3.7 billion from the World Bank and other international financial institutions to rehabilitate its ageing plants and transformers. The goal was unambiguous: steady, reliable electricity for Nigerians by 1992. Hamzat Ibrahim, NEPA's managing director at the time, was quoted as "already realising that the seat of the chief executive of the country's most criticised corporation is hotter than he had imagined." He was fighting vandals, battling a mounting accounting crisis, and trying to pour billions in borrowed money into infrastructure that had been neglected for years.
The question the TELL journalist posed in 1991 has now been answered not by any government press release or electricity authority communiqué, but by thirty-three more years of darkness.
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What ₦3.7 Billion Was Supposed to Buy
According to the TELL report, NEPA's rehabilitation plan was focused on its generation plants and transformer network. The authority had imported over 47 per cent of its total generating plants from Europe equipment estimated at $86 million (₦980.4 million at the exchange rate of the time). A survey by the Manufacturers Association of Nigeria (MAN) had revealed that only about eight per cent of industrial establishments in the country possessed their own electricity generators. The rest were entirely dependent on NEPA. Frequent power fluctuations had, by that point, already compelled almost every sizeable industry to begin investing in backup generation to avoid production losses.
The TELL story quoted Oladapo Fafowora, MAN's director-general at the time: frequent power cuts and voltage fluctuations had made self-generation not a luxury but a survival strategy for Nigerian business.
The ₦3.7 billion loan was meant to change all of that. Rehabilitate the plants. Fix the transformers. End the era of epileptic supply. Have the lights on steadily by 1992.
By 1999 seven years after the promised deadline only 19 out of 79 generator plants were operational, running at a dismal 28 per cent capacity. The borrowed billions had passed through NEPA's accounts. The darkness had not passed from Nigeria's streets.