Power to the States, But Where is the Light?

SOStainabilityWeekly

Edited by Oke Epia, E-mail: sostainability01@gmail.com  | WhatsApp: +234 8034000706

Trends and Threads

Nigeria’s power model had largely been full federal control, marked by decades of darkness. Even with an installed generation capacity of about 13,000 MW, the grid struggled to supply continuous, dependable power to homes and businesses, as most Nigerians lived with intermittent supply, forcing many to resort to generators, contributing to environmental pollution and high operating costs for households and industries alike.

A ray of hope emerged on the horizon when President Bola Tinubu signed the Electricity Act of 2023 into law. Electricity was removed from the Exclusive Legislative List, effectively dismantling the federal monopoly over power generation, transmission, and distribution. It was a decisive pivot toward decentralization. But decentralization is not an end in itself: the real question is whether this new power equation can deliver what decades of federal control could not.

From Central Control to Shared Responsibility

The Electricity Act of 2023 rewrites the rules of engagement. It explicitly recognizes the right of state governments to generate, transmit, and distribute electricity within their territories. States can now facilitate their own electricity markets without waiting for Abuja’s approval. The Act however, did not entirely strip the federal government of control as it retains authority over the national grid, inter-state and international electricity transmission, and the establishment of technical and safety standards. The Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission (NERC) continues to regulate interstate supply and oversee national market stability. In simple terms, Nigeria now operates a dual system. States regulate intra-state electricity markets. The federal government regulates the grid and interstate flow. The law aims to strengthen cooperation between the two layers rather than create fragmentation. This is a profound shift. For the first time, a governor who is serious about electricity reform has the legal space to act decisively.

Renewable Energy in the Mix

One of the more consequential, yet often overlooked, elements of the 2023 Act is its push for clean energy adoption. It mandates that electricity generation companies meet renewable energy obligations, meaning they must either generate from renewable sources, purchase renewable power, or buy renewable generation certificates. Distribution companies are similarly tasked with renewable purchase obligations. This clause is not window-dressing. It signals a shift towards an energy mix that no longer privileges fossil-powered generation alone. By embedding renewable requirements into the law, Nigeria attaches economic incentives to sustainability by potentially unleashing investment in solar, wind, hydro, and other clean technologies that can work closer to where people live and where national grids are weak. It opens the space for off-grid and embedded systems to thrive, particularly in remote areas. If properly implemented, this provision could reduce generator dependency, lower long-term costs, and address the environmental burden of small-scale fossil fuel generation. But mandates without enforcement risk becoming ceremonial. The challenge will be monitoring compliance and ensuring renewable procurement does not become a paperwork exercise. For this vision to be more meaningful, the emphasis on renewable energy within the act must be clear, deliberate, and consistently enforced.

States That Have Taken the Leap

Policy is only as meaningful as its implementation. Under the Act, a state must pass its own electricity law, set up an electricity regulator, and then formally request NERC to transfer intrastate regulatory authority. Once that happens, the state regulator takes full control of intrastate licensing and enforcement. States that have taken the leap fully include Enugu, Ondo, Ekiti, Imo, Oyo, Edo, and Kogi. These states have passed enabling legislation, established regulators, and received transfer orders from NERC. Others preparing to make the move include Lagos, Ogun, Niger, and Plateau. In some of these pioneering states, regulators have already begun exercising their authority. In Enugu, for example, the Enugu Electricity Regulatory Commission (EERC) used its powers to reduce tariffs for Band A customers from ₦209 per kWh to ₦160 per kWh, a bold move aimed at easing the cost burden on consumers. But this action sparked controversy: NERC argued that states cannot independently alter tariffs for power sourced from the national grid, since states don’t regulate the grid itself. NERC insists that any tariff design at the state level must reflect the full wholesale cost of grid-supplied electricity, or states must subsidize the difference. This friction underscores how new legal authority doesn’t instantly translate into smooth operational power. Meanwhile, Lagos State is widely viewed as a critical test case. With its economic size and industrial base, Lagos has the financial muscle and market demand to build embedded generation, invest in independent transmission corridors, and create a robust state-level electricity market. If Lagos succeeds, it may provide a blueprint for others. If it struggles, confidence in decentralization could wane. Other states that remain in earlier phases of implementation are Delta, Nassarawa, Jigawa, Bayelsa, Abia, Akwa Ibom, Gombe, Rivers, and Osun. These are either drafting legislation or building regulatory capacity. Political hesitation, institutional weakness, and funding constraints slow the transition in some regions. The uneven pace highlights a key risk: decentralization may widen disparities between proactive and passive states.

Energy at the Core of Industrial Strategy

In 2025, Nigeria unveiled a National Industrial Policy that places energy, especially reliable and affordable electricity, at the core of its industrialization strategy. The policy frames energy reform as the key bottleneck to industrial growth, aligning directly with the decentralized vision of the Electricity Act of 2023.  The industrial policy emphasizes renewable expansion, solar and hybrid solutions for industrial clusters, and state-level energy autonomy as pathways to unlock competitiveness. It even sets targets for renewable energy’s share in Nigeria’s energy mix and promotes local production of renewable hardware like solar panels. By tying electricity reform to industrial policy goals, the government acknowledges that factories cannot thrive in a country where businesses still rely on expensive, unreliable power alternatives. But here’s the test: policies are only as strong as their implementation. States must build regulatory capacity, attract genuine investment, ensure accountability, and deploy clear frameworks for tariffs, grid management in their territories, and clean energy adoption. Without those measures, decentralization could become another phrase that sounds good on paper but fails in practice.

Progress and Persistent Barriers

There is undeniable movement. States are drafting frameworks, investors are exploring embedded generation opportunities, and regulatory institutions are emerging beyond Abuja. For the first time, electricity reform feels geographically dynamic rather than centrally static.Yet structural barriers remain formidable. The national grid is still fragile and frequently collapses. Most states remain dependent on federal transmission lines. Building independent state-level transmission infrastructure requires enormous capital and technical expertise. Regulatory capacity at the state level must mature rapidly to avoid inconsistencies that deter investors.There is also the political dimension. Electricity reform requires transparent tariff methodologies, subsidy clarity, and tough conversations about cost-reflective pricing. If decentralization becomes a tool for populist tariff cuts without sustainable funding models, markets will distort quickly. The Act created a massive opportunity: the government and the private sector now have a call to obey.  Governors can either use this new leverage to build credible markets, attract clean energy investment, and strengthen regulatory institutions, or they can politicize electricity and repeat past cycles of short-term optics and long-term failure. The decentralization of power is historic. Whether it becomes transformative depends entirely on execution. Now the real test begins: which governors will truly light up their state?

Washing and Hushing

Climate Change as a Lens into Social Inequality

Climate change is fundamentally a justice issue. Globally, major reports by bodies such as the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) emphasize that climate impacts are not experienced equally: the communities least responsible for greenhouse gas emissions are often the hardest hit. According to UNEP’s recent adaptation gap assessments, developing countries face a huge shortfall in climate resilience funding, deepening vulnerability in regions already challenged by poverty and social marginalization. The IPCC notes that climate change intensifies existing social disparities, particularly affecting food security, health, and access to basic services.

For Nigeria, this global reality is reflected in the lived experiences of millions. The nation’s agricultural sector, which is the backbone of roughly 70 percent of households, remains highly sensitive to climate variability. Floods, droughts, and shifting seasons translate directly into crop failures, livestock losses, and food insecurity, pushing families deeper into poverty. When floods hit in 2022, over 1.4 million Nigerians were displaced, more than 600 people lost their lives, and over 110,000 hectares of farmland were destroyed. The scale of destruction was unprecedented, with devastation stretching across more than 30 of the country’s 36 states and pushing millions more into humanitarian distress.

Nigeria: Of Rich Resources and Unequal Impacts

In Nigeria, these global dynamics find stark local expression. The country’s natural wealth, from fertile soils to oil reserves, has coexisted with deep environmental degradation that exacts a heavy toll on the most vulnerable.

Nigeria’s agricultural sector, which employs a majority of the workforce, is extremely sensitive to climate stressors like drought and flooding. These impacts ripple through communities that depend on consistent growing seasons for food and income. In Sokoto State, farmers have reported dramatic changes in rainfall patterns, leaving rivers dry and crops withering. This doesn’t just weaken food production; it heightens food prices and intensifies food insecurity. At the same time, ecological degradation from deforestation, mining, and oil industry pollution compounds climate vulnerabilities and fuels social inequities. Nigeria lost more than a third of its forest cover between 1990 and 2005, and by 2005 led the world in deforestation rates, a symptom of voracious land cultivation, fuelwood collection, and infrastructure development.

Similarly, mining activities both formal and informal, have had profound human and ecological costs. The well-documented lead poisoning outbreak in Zamfara State, which killed hundreds of children and poisoned thousands more, is a lasting testament to how unregulated mining destroys lives and livelihoods in marginalized areas. Mining operations often leave behind contaminated soil and water, contributing to chronic health hazards that overwhelmingly impact communities with limited access to healthcare.

These are not isolated incidents. Gully erosion ravages southeastern landscapes, swallowing farmland and homes as rainfall patterns shift and soil integrity collapses.  And desertification, driven by both climate change and land-use pressures, now threatens an estimated 43 percent of Nigeria’s land, endangering the livelihoods of more than 40 million people.

Frameworks for Redress: The Climate Change Act 2021

Against this backdrop, Nigeria’s Climate Change Act of 2021 provides a crucial legal foundation for shaping climate policy and linking it with social justice. The Act was enacted to mainstream climate actions into national development, guide mitigation and adaptation strategies, and create governance structures capable of responding to climate risks. Importantly for social justice, the legal framework emphasises risk identification, resilience building, and strengthening adaptive capacities, principles that recognise vulnerable populations not only as victims of climate hazards but as stakeholders in solutions. Through the formulation of climate action plans and stakeholder engagement mechanisms, the law creates spaces for inclusive decision‑making and public participation in climate governance.

The Act thus advances several social justice goals: protecting vulnerable groups by identifying their needs within climate strategies; mandating broad stakeholder engagement that can include voices of civil society, women, and youth; promoting “just transition” approaches that link low‑carbon pathways with sustainable livelihoods; and providing entry points for legal accountability and climate litigation consistent with broader global trends toward rights‑based climate action. Whether the National Council on Climate Change (NCCC) is adequately steering implementation of the law in this direction is another conversation. 

Economic Incentives Versus Environmental Harm

In Nigeria, environmental degradation is closely tied to how economic value is generated. A development model built heavily on extraction, especially oil and gas, has shaped both the landscape and the distribution of risk. In regions where drilling, gas flaring, and pipeline networks operate, ecosystems have been altered, water sources contaminated, and agricultural land degraded. For many rural communities, the environment is not separate from survival; it is the source of food, income, and cultural identity. When that environment is damaged, livelihoods collapse with it.

The injustice lies in how the costs and benefits are allocated. Revenue from extractive industries strengthens national budgets and corporate balance sheets, yet the environmental burden is concentrated in local communities. Fisherfolk facing polluted rivers, farmers working on oil-degraded soil, and children exposed to toxic air do not share proportionately in the profits generated from those same economic activities. Environmental harm becomes localized, while economic gain is centralized.

Fossil fuel dependence also delays structural investment in cleaner energy and climate-resilient infrastructure. This prolongs environmental harm and increases vulnerability to climate impacts, particularly in marginalized areas where housing is fragile and public services are limited. Weak regulatory enforcement further deepens this imbalance. When environmental standards are not strictly monitored or violations are not transparently sanctioned, damage accumulates and trust erodes. In this context, environmental degradation is not only an ecological issue; it becomes a social justice issue. Communities with the least political leverage experience the highest environmental risk. The pattern reveals a clear correlation: where economic incentives prioritize extraction and fiscal gains, environmental harm intensifies, and inequality widens alongside it.

Accountability and Measurable Responsibility

Social justice in climate governance becomes real only when institutions use their authority to correct structural imbalance. The Federal Ministry of Environment sits at the center of environmental policy and enforcement. Its responsibility goes beyond drafting frameworks; it must ensure that environmental impact assessments genuinely account for low-income and high-risk communities, that adaptation funds are directed toward flood-prone and drought-affected regions, and that environmental regulations are enforced consistently rather than selectively. When enforcement is weak, marginalized communities absorb pollution, flooding, and land degradation without remedy. Strong oversight from the ministry is, therefore a direct pathway to social protection.

The NCCC carries the coordinating mandate under the Climate Change Act. Its role is not symbolic. By setting carbon budgets and supervising the National Climate Change Action Plan, it determines whether climate action addresses inequality or ignores it. Social justice requires the Council to integrate vulnerability data into national planning, publish annual performance updates, and make consultation processes accessible to civil society groups and frontline communities. Transparency from the Council transforms climate commitments into measurable obligations.

Regulators in the petroleum industry, including the Nigeria Upstream Petroleum Regulatory Commission (NUPRC) and the Nigeria Midstream and Downstream Petroleum Regulatory Authority (NMDPRA), occupy a critical position because fossil fuel operations intersect directly with environmental harm. Communities in oil-producing areas have long experienced pollution, health risks, and degraded livelihoods. If operators in the sector strengthen emissions disclosure, accelerate remediation of polluted sites, and invest in clean energy and community transition programmes, it can help shift the burden away from populations that have historically paid the environmental cost of national revenue generation. Without such alignment, climate policy risks appearing disconnected from on-the-ground realities.

Enforcement authority also lies with the National Environmental Standards and Regulations Enforcement Agency (NESREA). Regulations only protect communities when compliance is monitored and violations carry consequences. Transparent reporting of inspections, penalties, and compliance status ensures that environmental standards are not applied unevenly. Marginalized communities often lack legal resources to challenge violations; effective regulatory enforcement becomes their first line of defense.

At the subnational level, state environmental protection agencies and legislative oversight committees must integrate climate risk into planning approvals, infrastructure investments, and budget allocations. Social justice in climate governance is ultimately measured by whether institutions direct protection and opportunity toward those most exposed. Accountability, therefore, is not an administrative routine; it is the mechanism through which marginalized communities gain both protection from harm and a voice in shaping resilience.

Towards Climate Justice and Shared Responsibility

The links between climate change and inequality can no longer be denied. The world’s poorest and most marginalized populations are already paying the steepest price not only in economic loss but in lives disrupted and dignity challenged. The challenges faced in Nigeria, from desertification to ecosystem loss and food insecurity, are a microcosm of global patterns where climate change compounds existing injustices.Communities at greatest risk must not be treated merely as beneficiaries of aid. Protection is essential, but participation is transformative. Inclusive decision-making ensures that adaptation strategies reflect lived realities rather than distant assumptions. Climate policy must therefore move beyond top-down planning. Local governments should institutionalize community climate councils. Youth and women’s organizations should be represented in state-level climate planning committees. Social protection programmes should integrate climate risk indicators, ensuring that vulnerable populations receive anticipatory support before disasters escalate. Equal opportunity in the green economy is equally critical. Renewable energy expansion, climate-smart agriculture, and ecosystem restoration must translate into accessible employment pathways for marginalized populations. A just transition cannot exist without skills development, equitable financing access, and anti-corruption safeguards

An Urgent Call to Action

Protecting populations at greatest risk requires more than policies on paper. It demands clear accountability from leaders, enforcement of environmental laws, inclusion of marginalized voices in decision-making, and substantial investment in community-defined solutions. It requires that climate strategies are grounded in fairness, prioritizing those most at risk. Whether transitioning to sustainable livelihoods, restoring degraded lands through the Great Green Wall, empowering women in conservation, or mobilizing youth for climate advocacy, the central thread must be justice not just for some, but for all. As the world reflects each year on Social Justice Day, observed on February 20th, so too must nations like Nigeria reflect on how climate justice and social equity converge. Fighting climate change is about ensuring that every child, farmer, artisan, and elder can look toward the horizon not with fear, but with hope.

Spotlight

Stubbs Creek Forest Reserve: The $554.8 million Climate Cost of the Lagos‑Calabar Coastal Highway

As agitations continue to swirl over the climate impact of the Lagos Calabar Coastal Highway (LCCH), the Stubbs Creek Forest Reserve (SCFR) has continued to be highlighted as an example of the opportunity cost of an otherwise celebratory infrastructure development. A technical research has used greenhouse gas (GHG) flux analysis to make the argument scientific. Authored by Joel Benson, a GHG scientist/analyst, the work used data sourced from geospatial datasets and remote sensing via the Earthmap engine, with greenhouse gas (GHG) estimation conducted using the Environmental Externalities Accounting Framework. According to a summary shared with SOStainability, results from the research indicated “a total carbon balance of 3,511,562 tCO₂e, representing a net release of greenhouse gases. Carbon dioxide (CO₂) was the dominant contributor, accounting for 3,510,847 tCO₂e, primarily from biomass removal and soil carbon loss, while nitrous oxide (N₂O) contributed 715 tCO₂e due to disruption of nitrogen cycling.

“The findings demonstrate that the intervention would convert SCFR from a major carbon sink into a significant carbon source, resulting in the loss of existing forest carbon stocks and future sequestration capacity. The associated economic cost of these emissions was estimated at approximately US$554.8 million, reflecting the high climate value of the forest reserve. The study concludes that SCFR constitutes a critical climate mitigation asset whose protection is non-negotiable, and that infrastructure interventions such as the LCCH should be rerouted well away from the reserve.

“The study recommends urgent collaboration between international organizations, the Federal Government of Nigeria, and the Akwa Ibom State Government to protect the Stubbs Creek Forest Reserve and recognize it as an endangered and protected fragile forest ecosystem of global importance. It recommends the avoidance of intact forest ecosystems in infrastructure planning, the integration of comprehensive climate impact assessments into project appraisal, and the prioritisation of forest conservation as a core component of national, regional, and global climate mitigation strategies.”