From renewable energy plants losing value after commissioning to ageing grid infrastructure and 21 newly discovered dams, Nigeria is confronting a problem that goes beyond building infrastructure to maintaining it, WALIAT MUSA reports.

Nigeria has traditionally measured its infrastructure story by contracts awarded, projects completed and facilities commissioned. The more difficult question begins after the ceremony: who keeps the asset working, who pays for its upkeep, and what happens when nobody does?

At the launch of the Renewable Asset Management Company (RAMCO), the Ministry of Finance Incorporated (MOFI) revealed that it had authenticated public assets worth N1.25 trillion, raising a more fundamental question about what the government owns and how those assets are being used.

The figure represents the value of public assets that MOFI said it had initially established and verified. Yet, while the government is still identifying what it owns, another question is how much value is already being lost from built assets.

Nigeria’s renewable energy programme provides an uncomfortable starting point.

Since 2017, the Rural Electrification Agency (REA) has deployed 82MW of solar-hybrid generation across 22 federal universities and three teaching hospitals under the Energising Education Programme (EEP), representing about N263 billion in investments by the Federal Government, the World Bank and the African Development Bank.

However, when REA inspected the first seven-phase sites, only three remained in good or usable condition. Four had deteriorated.

For REA Managing Director, Abba Aliyu, the significance lies less in the technology than in what happened after commissioning.

“There was no sustainable maintenance regime, no dependable revenue mechanism and, critically, no institution whose primary responsibility was to preserve those assets throughout their economic lives,” he said.

The diagnosis exposes a weakness that has followed public infrastructure for decades. The government has often treated completion as the end of a project rather than the beginning of the period in which an asset must prove its economic value.

“These are not projections. These are assets already built,” he added.

Yet the same programme also demonstrated what proper asset management can achieve.

At Alex Ekwueme Federal University, Ndufu-Alike, the solar plant commissioned in 2019 generated approximately N1.8 billion in combined savings from avoided diesel purchases and electricity bills during its first five years, according to Aliyu.

One publicly funded renewable energy asset delivered measurable economic returns, while four of seven comparable projects were already deteriorating.

The contrast suggests that the problem is no longer whether Nigeria can build renewable energy infrastructure, but whether it can preserve the value and shelf life of what it has already financed.

That is the premise behind RAMCO, but its implications extend far beyond that.
Aliyu said REA has more than 150MW under construction or in the pipeline through TETFund, DARES, the National Public Sector Solarisation Initiative, later phases of EEP, Desert to Power and other publicly financed programmes.

Another 70 to 80 public institutions could be powered by REA-delivered assets within three years.

Without a credible maintenance and payment system, however, a larger portfolio could simply reproduce the same problem on a much bigger scale.

“If a battery or inverter requires replacement in year eight, we should not return to the Treasury in year eight looking for emergency funding. The money should already be there,” Aliyu said.

The challenge becomes even more consequential when renewable energy assets are viewed alongside the wider electricity system.

Minister of Power, Joseph Tegbe, described Nigeria’s situation as an “embarrassing paradox”, noting that the country has substantial power assets, energy resources and installed infrastructure, yet remains unable to provide the reliable electricity expected of an economy pursuing industrial growth.

Asset management, he argued, cannot stop at solar plants.
The ministry is already cataloguing grid assets, including towers, substations and transformers, while technical audits are assessing equipment across three major energy corridors.

The inspections are identifying broken insulators, failing conductors and relays, as well as damaged transmission towers, before replacement work begins on infrastructure that, in some cases, has been operating for four decades.

“Trippings must stop. Grid collapses must stop,” he said.

The objective, according to Tegbe, is not simply to count infrastructure but to strengthen the balance sheet behind it.

Tegbe disclosed that 21 dams were identified along the Sokoto-Badagry Road during construction, and that the government is now developing a policy to convert them into commercially viable small-scale hydropower projects.

The discovery creates another test for the emerging asset-management philosophy.

The question is no longer merely whether the dams can generate electricity, but whether they will be designed from the outset around ownership, operation, maintenance, revenue generation and replacement planning.

The ambition is considerable because Nigeria’s transmission network represents a far larger and more complex asset-management challenge than a collection of solar installations.

The consequences become even more severe in healthcare, where electricity is not simply an operating cost.

Minister of State for Health and Social Welfare, Dr Iziaq Adekunle, described electricity in hospitals as a clinical necessity rather than an amenity.

He said that between 60 and 70 per cent of Nigerian primary healthcare centres experience frequent outages or lack electricity, while about 40 per cent of functional primary healthcare centres lack electricity altogether.

“It is the absence of scheduled innovative maintenance, the absence of anyone holding a clear mandate once the commissioning ends,” he said.

The ministry plans to integrate health facility energy audits with RAMCO’s asset register, giving each installation both a facility custodian and a professional manager under contract.

The proposal reinforces the deeper lesson running through all three interventions: public infrastructure needs an identifiable owner long after officials have left the commissioning ground.

The significance of MOFI’s N1.25 trillion asset portfolio, therefore, lies not simply in its size but in the questions it raises.

Managing Director, Dr Armstrong Takang, said MOFI’s first question was not how much Nigeria owed but: “What do we own?”

After establishing the N1.25 trillion figure, MOFI began examining what those assets were doing, what cash flows they generated and whether those revenues could contribute to debt servicing and maintenance.

In practical terms, an asset that cannot deliver its intended service, revenue or economic benefit is consuming capital without generating the return for which it was built.

Takang also warned that electricity distribution companies must rethink their position as growing electricity consumption increasingly occurs outside the traditional grid.

The Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission’s (NERC) 2026 Mini-grid Regulations already recognise both isolated and interconnected mini-grids, providing a framework for permits, registration, operations and eventual transfer of mini-grid businesses.

The regulatory architecture is beginning to catch up with an electricity market in which the national grid is no longer the only route through which power reaches consumers.

Nigeria’s infrastructure challenge has rarely been an inability to spend money on projects. The harder challenge has been turning expenditure into lasting productive capacity.

The figures are substantial: N1.25 trillion in verified public assets, N263 billion invested in renewable energy projects, 82MW already deployed under EEP, more than 150MW of additional projects under development, another 70 to 80 public institutions expected to join the programme, N135 billion invested in grid extension between 2012 and 2024, and 21 dams now being considered for small-scale hydropower.

The numbers are significant. Their real value, however, will ultimately be measured not by what has been built but by what continues to work.

Nigeria’s long-standing infrastructure problem will not be solved by another commissioning ceremony. It will be decided years later, when the battery fails, the inverter needs replacing, the transformer reaches the end of its useful life, tariffs go unpaid or maintenance is deferred.

That is the moment when an infrastructure project either remains a productive public asset or begins the slow journey towards becoming another stranded investment.

There was no sustainable maintenance regime, no dependable revenue mechanism and, critically, no institution whose primary responsibility was to preserve those assets throughout their economic lives.