By Muhammad Masud Yerima
From 2005 to 2025, the global electricity access story changed dramatically. Countries like India and Bangladesh moved from being among the countries with the highest populations without electricity access to largely exiting the list. Meanwhile, Nigeria moved in the opposite direction from third place in 2005 to leading the world in the number of people without access to electricity by 2025.
That should concern every policymaker, investor, planner, and citizen.
In 2005, India had over 360 million people without electricity access. Today, India is no longer on the list. Nigeria, on the other hand, increased from roughly 77 million people without access in 2005 to over 88 million in 2025. This is despite Nigeria being one of Africa’s largest economies and one of the world’s biggest oil and gas producers.
The question is simple:
What did India do right, and what is Nigeria still getting wrong?
India treated electricity not just as infrastructure, but as a national development priority. The country invested aggressively in grid expansion, rural electrification, generation capacity, transmission infrastructure, and policy reforms. Programs like village electrification schemes, renewable energy deployment, and public-private sector collaboration accelerated access across both urban and rural communities. More importantly, India planned long-term and executed at scale.
Nigeria’s challenge is more complex than simply “not enough power generation.” The issue is systemic.
First, population growth has outpaced infrastructure development. Nigeria’s population has expanded rapidly, but transmission networks, distribution systems, and generation capacity have not grown at the same pace. Even where generation exists, the grid often cannot evacuate or distribute the power efficiently.
Second, infrastructure investment has been inconsistent. Transmission bottlenecks, aging equipment, weak distribution networks, vandalism, and underinvestment continue to limit reliability and access. In many parts of the country, being connected to the grid does not even guarantee stable electricity.
Third, planning and execution remain fragmented. Energy policy changes frequently, projects are abandoned, and long-term continuity is weak. Electrification requires coordinated planning across generation, transmission, distribution, regulation, financing, and industrial development not isolated projects.
What makes this more worrying is the timing.
The world is entering a new economic era driven by artificial intelligence, cloud computing, automation, robotics, and digital infrastructure. Data centers are becoming the factories of the digital economy, and none of them can function without reliable electricity.
From the Agricultural Revolution to the Industrial Revolution, then the Information Age, and now the AI-driven digital economy, every major leap in civilization has been powered by energy.
Without reliable electricity:
* industries cannot scale,
* manufacturing becomes expensive,
* innovation slows,
* startups struggle,
* and Nigeria risks falling behind in the global digital economy.
The next global race will not only be about oil or population size. It will be about computational power, digital infrastructure, and energy resilience.
Beyond politics, this is a conversation Nigerian youths and every citizen must begin to take seriously. The future of Nigeria cannot depend only on election cycles and political debates. We need long-term systemic thinking about infrastructure, industrialization, energy security, education, and technology.
Nigeria is our country.
And if we truly want to compete globally in the modern economy, then stable and accessible electricity can no longer be treated as a secondary issue. It is the foundation upon which modern nations are built.
Muhammad Masud Yerima Mohayerima@gmail.com
