KEY POINTS
- Nigeria has received $3.653 billion in World Bank power sector loans since 2001 across nine projects.
- The federal government cancelled $717.7 million in undisbursed World Bank power funds in May 2026.
- Experts blame corruption, weak governance and gas supply constraints for the sector’s continued failure.
Nigeria has taken in $3.653 billion in World Bank-backed funding for its electricity sector over 24 years. The lights still go out. The grid still collapses. Millions of Nigerians still run petrol and diesel generators because the alternative is sitting in the dark.
A review of World Bank-supported power projects between 2001 and 2024 shows nine major interventions spanning transmission upgrades, sector reforms, rural electrification, renewable energy and recovery programmes. The list starts with a $100 million Transmission Development Project in 2001 and runs through a $500 million Sustainable Power and Irrigation for Nigeria project launched in 2024. The investments in between include a $750 million Power Sector Recovery Programme approved in 2020 and a $750 million Distributed Access through Renewable Energy Scale-up programme introduced in 2023.
None of it has produced stable, reliable power for Africa’s most populous country.
The cancelled $717 million
The most recent chapter in this story is not an investment. It is a cancellation. The federal government formally cancelled $717.7 million in undisbursed World Bank financing for the Power Sector Recovery Performance-Based Operation in May 2026, citing evolving sector realities and a failure to achieve key reform milestones. The programme’s closing date was pulled forward from June 30, 2027 to May 31, 2026, ending the operation more than a year ahead of schedule.
That cancellation alone would have ranked as one of the sector’s larger single interventions if it had been disbursed. Instead, it was returned.
What experts say is actually broken
University of Lagos energy professor Dayo Ayoade put the diagnosis plainly. “The economy will continue to lose money and will not develop provided we don’t take control of the power sector,” he said. “There are too many loopholes and leakages.”
He described self-generation as an inherently inefficient solution that drives up costs without fixing the underlying problem. His prescription: genuine sector reform, tariffs that reflect the actual cost of delivering electricity and an end to the proliferation of new institutions that have added bureaucracy without adding megawatts.
Industry experts more broadly point to weak transmission infrastructure, gas supply constraints, liquidity shortfalls, vandalism and policy inconsistencies as the compounding factors that have neutralized successive interventions. The World Bank’s own strategy has shifted, moving from conventional transmission projects toward renewable energy and decentralized access. Whether that shift produces different outcomes than the previous $3.6 billion is the question the sector now faces.
