The National Secretary of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Ajibola Bashiru, says Nigeria is not running a socialist system where production, transmission, and distribution of electricity are carried out for the free use of citizens rather than for profit.

“Energy is not cheap anywhere in the world. Nigeria is not running a socialist society. Let us get it very right. We are in a globalised economy,” the former Senate spokesman said on Channels Television’s Political Paradigm programme on Tuesday.

Bashiru, who represented Osun Central Senatorial District in the 9th Senate from 2019 to 2023, was responding to a claim made by Lagos State Deputy Governor, Obafemi Hamzat, who lamented the astronomical increase in electricity bill slammed on his house by a distribution company in the nation’s economic nerve centre.

At a meeting with the Rural Electricity Agency (REA) in Lagos on Monday, Hamzat, also a member of the ruling APC, complained that the disco raised the electricity bill to his quarters from ₦2.7m in March to ₦29m in April.

“Of recent, the transmission companies have been unbundled to address the problem of inefficiency and for adequate focus to ensure there is electricity supply for Nigerians,” he said.

“As to the tale by the deputy governor of Lagos State, I don’t know the level of gadgets he has in his house. I wouldn’t know the size of his house and I wouldn’t know the energy requirement that would occasion that huge amount of money and the basis of that bill.

“But it would not be correct to say that that humongous amount would apply to ordinary Nigerians who just run their lifestyle based on watching television, using electricity, and possibly when there is heat, using air condition.”

For decades, Nigeria, Africa’s most populous nation, has been faced with intractable energy challenges, no thanks to an epileptic power supply that significantly affects productivity levels. Despite the privatisation of the electricity sector, power generation, transmission, and distribution have remained bogged with hydra-headed monsters of policy inconsistency, low investments, and operational challenges.

In 2024, the Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission (NERC) approved the upward review of electricity prices with a unit of power costing about N250 for Band A customers. The cost of petrol and diesel which are readily available alternatives have equally increased by fivefold, compounding the dilemma of consumers.

In the same year, NERC granted at least eight State’s Electrify Regulatory Commissions licenses to power plants and power distribution. The states are Enugu, Ekiti, Ondo, Imo, Edo, Kogi, Oyo and Lagos. More states have been granted the same licence in 2025.