President Bola Ahmed Tinubu has approved the reconstitution of the Board of the Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission (NERC), following the Senate’s confirmation of its members on December 16. This decision reinforces a clear and deliberate message that strategic national institutions must be led by proven professionals with deep sectoral expertise and demonstrable capacity.
The newly constituted board is largely composed of seasoned regulators and energy experts with strong institutional memory, technical competence, and a verifiable track record within Nigeria’s power sector. This approach is widely regarded as fundamental to achieving sustainable reform in a technically complex, highly regulated, and capital-intensive industry such as electricity.
President Tinubu has charged the board to deepen and consolidate ongoing power sector reforms in strict alignment with both the letter and the spirit of the Electricity Act, 2023. Key priorities include strengthening market discipline, boosting investor confidence, protecting consumers, and ensuring the long-term viability and competitiveness of the electricity market.
Why Square Pegs Must Be in Square Holes
Placing square pegs in square holes is not merely a slogan, it is a governance imperative, particularly in critical sectors like electricity that underpin national productivity and economic stability.
Competence Drives Results
The power sector requires deep technical, regulatory, economic, and policy expertise. Appointing individuals with proven sectoral knowledge minimizes costly trial-and-error governance, accelerates evidence-based decision-making, and improves regulatory outcomes.
Professionalism Builds Credibility
Regulators with a reputation for professionalism and integrity inspire confidence among investors, operators, consumers, and development partners. Credible regulation remains the backbone of market stability, transparency, and sustained private sector participation.
Continuity Enhances Reform
Retaining experienced hands preserves institutional memory, promotes policy consistency, and enables the smoother implementation of reforms under the Electricity Act, 2023. This continuity helps to avoid the disruptions often associated with politically motivated or inexperienced appointments.
Development Is Expertise-Led
Nigeria’s power sector challenges, including tariff sustainability, grid reliability, market liquidity, and the energy transition, are development imperatives that demand technocratic leadership rather than patronage-driven decision-making.
Public Trust and Accountability
When appointments are transparently based on competence, public confidence in governance improves, and office holders are held to higher standards of performance, responsibility, and accountability.
Bottom Line
By reconstituting the NERC board with experienced regulators and energy professionals, the Tinubu administration sends a strong and reassuring signal that national development thrives when merit, competence, and professionalism, rather than sentiment or politics, drive public appointments.
Governance Today Nigeria magazine and online news is of the view that the NERC system requires a comprehensive institutional overhaul to guarantee effectiveness and efficiency. This should include:
– Continuous training and retraining of staff, particularly in professionalism, ethics, regulatory discipline, and customer relations.
– Decisive action against incompetence and misconduct, ensuring that unproductive or corrupt personnel are disengaged and replaced with capable, ethical professionals.
– Regular and reliable power supply as the central performance metric, recognizing that stable electricity boosts productivity, creates jobs, meaningfully engages youths, and reduces the socio-economic vulnerabilities that fuel crimes such as robbery, kidnapping, and terrorism.
– The establishment of an independent monitoring unit or team to check excesses by operators, enforce regulatory compliance, and objectively commend operators when standards are met.
Only through competence-led regulation, institutional discipline, and firm accountability can Nigeria’s power sector truly deliver on its promise of economic growth, national security, and sustainable development.
