For decades, electricity in Nigeria was centralised and controlled by a centralised grid. The 2013 implementation of the power privatisation policy brought with it new hope, which did not deliver as expected as supply continued to fall short of demand and forced businesses and households to rely heavily on costly and environment - polluting diesel generators.
A pivotal shift came in 2023, when constitutional amendments placed power generation on the concurrent list – this meant that sub-national entities were empowered to generate, transmit, and distribute electricity independently. This led to the subsequent passage of the Electricity Act of 2023 and ultimately to the enactment of the Oyo State Electricity Law in 2024, which established the Oyo State Electricity Regulatory Commission (OSERC); one of Nigeria’s earliest, fully operational state-level power markets.
