KEY POINTS
- NDPHC chief Jennifer Adighije pledges 1,500MW to help close Lagos’s massive electricity supply gap.
- Lagos currently receives just 1,000MW from the national grid despite a demand of nearly 12,000MW.
- NDPHC owns 4,000MW in installed capacity but dispatches only 400 to 500MW daily due to stranded capacity.
Nigeria’s Niger Delta Power Holding Company is ready to pump an additional 1,500 megawatts into Lagos, the company’s managing director said Friday, stepping into one of the country’s most glaring energy deficits with a specific commitment and an unusually direct pitch for private investment.
Jennifer Adighije made the pledge during a courtesy visit to Temitope George, managing director of the Lagos State Electricity Regulatory Commission. She told LASERC that NDPHC currently holds about 2,000MW of stranded generation capacity sitting idle and is prepared to direct a significant portion of it toward the Lagos market.
The numbers behind the offer reveal the scale of the problem. Lagos currently receives roughly 1,000MW from the national grid. Its actual electricity demand is estimated at nearly 12,000MW. The gap is not a rounding error. It is a structural crisis that has defined daily life and constrained business across Africa’s largest city.
A company with capacity it cannot use
Adighije was candid about NDPHC’s own underperformance. The company holds the largest power generation asset base in sub-Saharan Africa, with installed capacity of about 4,000MW. Daily dispatch runs between 400MW and 500MW. The stranded capacity sitting between those two figures represents billions of naira in idle infrastructure and a solvable problem, if the right partnerships can be assembled.
“This clearly shows that we have significant stranded capacity,” she said. “Our mandate is fundamentally to scale up power generation alongside the associated transmission and distribution networks.”
The company’s unique position across the entire electricity value chain, from gas supply through generation, transmission and distribution, gives it leverage that most sector players do not have.
Lagos as the prize market
Adighije framed Lagos not as a charity case but as a commercial opportunity worth pursuing on its merits. “The Lagos electricity market is very lucrative and dynamic. This is a market where we are willing to make huge investments,” she said. She signaled a shift away from NDPHC’s historically intervention-based posture toward a market-driven investment model with a clear path to cost recovery.
George welcomed the visit and said LASERC had already unveiled plans during its maiden stakeholders’ engagement to ensure that some franchise areas in Lagos would receive 24-hour electricity supply. She described NDPHC as a credible partner already active in Lagos infrastructure and said the commission was ready to move forward on collaboration.
The NDPHC visit follows publication of the Lagos Electricity Market Report, which mapped the demand gap across the state and set a baseline Adighije said her company is now eager to help close.
