PRESS STATEMENT: The Nigerian “Stranded Power” Narrative, Reconsidered: What NERC’s Own Q1 2026 Data Show

(All bracketed citations refer to the Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission’s First Quarter 2026 Report (“the Report”), by section and printed page number, except where an external source is indicated. A full citation index follows the statement.)

The attention of the Transmission Company of Nigeria (TCN) has been drawn to a report published by THISDAY on 28 July 2026, titled “Gencos: Over 2,500MW Generated Power Wasted Due to Grid Unreliability,” in which the Association of Power Generation Companies (APGC) is quoted as stating that “Nigeria’s stranded power crisis is a transmission failure, not a generation failure,” and that an installed capacity of “over 15,500MW” is being throttled by a grid that “can only wheel around 4,500MW.”

TCN respects APGC’s standing as a voice for Generation Companies (GenCos) and shares its concern for the millions of Nigerians without reliable power. However, the Commission’s own First Quarter 2026 Report, published at the same time and covering the same period the THISDAY report describes, contains audited data for each plant that place the source of the “gap” referenced in the article at the power station fence, not the transmission gate.

1. The “4,500MW Ceiling” APGC Attributes to the Grid Is, In NERC’s Own Records, the Average Capacity GenCos Themselves Declared Available

The Report records that the average available generation capacity across all 28 power plants connected to the grid in 2026/Q1 was 4,457.96MW, a figure GenCos themselves declare to the System Operator, not a transmission wheeling limit set by TCN [1]. This is the same order of magnitude as the “4,500MW the grid can wheel” figure attributed to APGC in the THISDAY report, yet it originates upstream of any wire: it is what plant operators told the market was ready for dispatch.

The Report further records a total installed capacity of 13,625MW for the 28 plants covered, already almost 1,900MW below the “over 15,500MW” figure cited in the THISDAY article [2]. Before any conversation about the grid’s wheeling capacity can begin, the starting figures used to calculate the alleged “gap” require correction.

2. TCN’s Verified Wheeling Capacity Stands at 8,700MW, Far Above Any Volume of Power Ever Actually Generated

Even setting aside the average figures above, TCN’s own verified transmission wheeling capacity now stands at 8,700MW, following sustained investment in transformers, substations and transmission lines [14]. That figure is not a projection; it is a confirmed operational capacity, far above the “around 4,500MW” ceiling the THISDAY article attributes to the grid.

The clearest evidence that this capacity is real, rather than theoretical, is what the grid has already carried. On 4 March 2025, at 49.69Hz, the national grid transmitted an all time peak of 5,801.84MW, delivering a record 128,370.75MWh of energy within a single day, the highest daily volume in Nigeria’s history [15]. That peak, still the highest ever recorded, was wheeled out by the grid without incident and remains comfortably within the network’s 8,700MW capacity. Similar peaks were recorded on 2 March 2025 (5,713.60MW) and 14 February 2025 (5,543.20MW) [15]. A grid said to be limited to 4,500MW could not, as a matter of physics, have carried any of these volumes, let alone all three.

3. Continued Investment in Transformers, Reconductored Lines and Evacuation Routes Reinforces the Same Point

TCN’s capacity gains are not static. Between January 2024 and November 2025, a period of just 23 months, the Company commissioned 82 new power transformers nationwide, adding approximately 8,500MVA of transformation capacity, one of the most concentrated periods of grid strengthening in TCN’s history [16]. This has been accompanied by active reconductoring of ageing transmission lines, including the Delta to Effurun 132kV line, the Sokoto to Birnin Kebbi line (raised from 70MW to 150MW) and the Ikeja West to Alimosho to Ogba to Alausa corridor (raised from 120MW to 240MW), among others [16].

Most recently, the Ihovbor to Benin and Ihovbor to Ajaokuta 330kV Turn In Turn Out lines, commissioned on 23 April 2026, added over 600MW of wheeling capacity to the Benin corridor and now enable fuller evacuation of power from the Azura Power Plant and the NIPP plant at Ihovbor, both within the Niger Delta Power Holding Company portfolio, with a combined evacuation potential of up to 1.5GW once both plants run at full output [17]. Investments of this kind, sustained over successive quarters, are difficult to reconcile with an account of the network as a static 4,500MW bottleneck.

4. NERC’s Own Plant Availability Table Shows the Shortfall Is Overwhelmingly a Problem on the Generation Side

Table 1 of the Report (“Plant Availability Factor (%) in 2025/Q4 vs. 2026/Q1”) shows a Plant Availability Factor (PAF) across the fleet of just 32.72% in 2026/Q1, meaning 67.28% of installed capacity was unavailable for dispatch at any given time during the quarter, before the question of transmission evacuation even arises [3]. This is a decline of 6.92 percentage points from 39.64% in 2025/Q4.

The individual plant figures in Table 1 make the point unambiguously:

These are gas supply, mechanical and feedstock constraints at the power stations themselves, precisely the constraints APGC’s own Chief Executive acknowledges elsewhere in the same THISDAY article, where she states that “gas supply to thermal plants has fallen to under 43 per cent of daily requirement.” That admission corroborates NERC’s Table 1; it does not support the claim that the shortfall is a problem of transmission wheeling.

Separately, the Report attributes a 28.80% fall in hydropower availability from one quarter to the next (from 2,227.20MW to 1,585.66MW) to seasonal dry season water levels and to mechanical and annual maintenance outages at Jebba, Shiroro, Kainji and Dadin-Kowa [4], again, conditions at the generating stations, not the wires that connect them to load centres.

5. If 2,500 to 4,000MW Were Genuinely Stranded Daily for Want of Evacuation Capacity, NERC’s Own Load Factor Data Could Not Show What They Show

The Report records an overall grid load factor of 92.26% for 2026/Q1, up 9.81 percentage points from 82.45% in 2025/Q4, meaning that, on average, only 7.74% of the capacity GenCos actually declared available went undispatched at any point in the quarter [5]. Against an available capacity base of 4,457.96MW, that 7.74% amounts to approximately 345MW, not the 2,500 to 4,000MW APGC describes as stranded on a daily basis.

Five plants, Trans Amadi_1, Geregu_1, Ibom Power_1, Dadin-Kowa_1 and Olorunsogo_1, recorded load factors of a literal 100% in 2026/Q1: every megawatt those plants declared available was dispatched [6]. A grid that is systematically incapable of evacuating thousands of stranded megawatts does not simultaneously fully evacuate the output of five separate plants.

6. The “Technical Losses” Figure Does Not Support a Claim of 1,200 to 1,300MW a Day

The Report’s audited Transmission Loss Factor (TLF) for 2026/Q1 was 7.96% of energy sent out by GenCos, equivalent to roughly 327MW of average hourly loss across a 4,113MWh/h average hourly generation base, not the figure of 1,200 to 1,300MW a day cited in the THISDAY report.

More importantly, the ₦2.61 billion cost the Report attaches to TLF underperformance in 2026/Q1 is not, in the main, a cost of wires losses. It comprises approximately ₦257.91 million in actual TLF losses and ₦2.35 billion in a GenCo capacity penalty passed through the Transmission Service Provider’s books [7]. Attributing the larger of these two components to “transmission inefficiency” inverts what the Report’s own footnote says it is.

7. The Dramatic 27 January 2026 Event Cited in the Article Is, by NERC’s Own Finding, a Reactive Power Event on the Generation Side

The THISDAY report describes a collapse in which “grid output fell from 3,825 MW at 10am to 39 MW by 11am” on 27 January 2026. This matches the partial system collapse recorded in the Report for that date. NERC’s preliminary finding on that event was the “lack of reactive power to support voltage margins to prevent voltage collapse” [8], reactive power support being an ancillary service procured and scheduled as part of system planning, a function that sits with the Nigerian Independent System Operator (NISO) and participants on the generation side, not a failure of a TCN transmission asset.

TCN does not seek to evade accountability where it is due: the Report records that the immediate cause of the separate total collapse on 23 January 2026 was the separation of a busbar at Sapele Transmission Station, a Transmission Service Provider asset, leading to loss of evacuation lines in the Delta corridor [9]. That incident has been investigated and traced to the operation of protective device from GenCo connected to the TCN busbar. The distinction matters precisely because balanced reporting requires attributing each event to its actual cause rather than folding both into a single “grid unreliability” narrative that obscures which institution is responsible for what.

8. The ₦2.28 Trillion Capacity Payment Loss Is More Plausibly a Commercial Collection Failure than an Evacuation Failure

Under the Partial Activation of Contract (PAC) regime described in the Report, DisCos carry “take or pay” obligations on their Partially Contracted Capacity (PCC): they must pay for available capacity irrespective of how much of it they actually take up [10]. A shortfall in GenCo capacity payments is therefore, structurally, a question of whether DisCos billed, collected and remitted what they owed, not a question of whether TCN’s wires could carry the power.

On that question, the Report is unambiguous: DisCos recorded an Aggregate Technical, Commercial and Collection (ATC&C) loss of 37.44% against a MYTO target of 16.92% in 2026/Q1, a variance NERC values at ₦140.64 billion in a single quarter [11], alongside a ₦24.95 billion shortfall in DisCo remittances to NBET and the Market Operator [12]. These sums, replicated across the year, are a far more direct explanation for GenCo capacity payment shortfalls than an evacuation constraint that NERC’s own load factor and PAF data do not support.

9. TCN’s Position

TCN does not dispute that Nigeria’s electricity supply industry is under severe strain, that outages impose real costs on households and businesses, or that transmission infrastructure, including assets damaged by vandalism, requires continued investment. The Company also does not dispute APGC’s account of falling gas supply to thermal plants; indeed, that account is corroborated by, and consistent with, NERC’s own Plant Availability Factor data.

What TCN disputes is the specific and repeated characterisation of the sector’s capacity gap as a transmission “wheeling” or “evacuation” failure. NERC’s First Quarter 2026 Report, the same regulatory dataset both APGC and TCN rely on, shows a plant availability factor across the fleet of 32.72% and a load factor of 92.26% on the capacity actually declared available. Taken together, this data places the origin of Nigeria’s “stranded power” overwhelmingly at the generation gate, not the transmission gate. This is reinforced, not contradicted, by TCN’s own verified wheeling capacity of 8,700MW, a figure the network has already demonstrated in practice through the record peak of 5,801.84MW carried on 4 March 2025.

TCN continues to invest in network reinforcement, substation upgrades, grid automation and measures to prevent vandalism, and remains committed to working with NISO, NERC, GenCos, DisCos and all other stakeholders toward a more reliable and bankable Nigerian Electricity Supply Industry. The Company encourages all industry commentators, including APGC, to anchor public claims about the sector in the Commission’s published quarterly data, so that solutions are directed at the part of the value chain where the evidence shows they are most needed.

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Signed

Management

Transmission Company of Nigeria, TCN

30/7/26