By Aderemi Ogunpitan
Between our inverters and diesel generators, we’ve kept our lights running for the past 48 hours of lack of electricity supply from Ikeja Electric.
We need to find a way to keep business running. The cost is killing!
We’re meant to be band A customers, right now its been band zero. A situation I know we all experience, except a few super priviledged.
It got me thinking that we face an electricity challenge whose scale we barely appreciate. We’re struggling to generate enough power for today’s population, yet millions more Nigerians will need electricity for homes, hospitals, schools, factories and businesses in the decades ahead. Yet today its barely sufficient. Think about that for a moment.
Whilst we struggle to catch up, the world is moving ahead at extraordinary speed.
Look at artificial intelligence (AI). The global race to build massive AI data centres is creating unprecedented demand for electricity.
Technology giants are investing billions in power plants, gas turbines, transformers, transmission infrastructure and dedicated energy supplies.
Now consider what this means for us.
We do not operate in isolation. We buy much of the same equipment needed to build our electricity infrastructure, from the same global market where wealthy nations and technology companies compete with us.
They have deeper pockets, stronger currencies, trusted governments, well though out policies and the financial muscle to secure equipment and manufacturing slots years ahead.
As demand rises, prices increase, delivery times lengthen and financing becomes more competitive.
We could find ourselves paying more and waiting longer for infrastructure we desperately needed yesterday.
AI did not create Nigeria’s electricity problems. Decades of underinvestment, poor planning, weak distribution networks and financial mismanagement did that. But the AI revolution threatens to make catching up even more difficult.
And population growth compounds the challenge. We cannot simply build enough electricity capacity for today’s needs. So, we must anticipate the demands of a much larger, increasingly urban and industrial economy. Now that is a real task ahead.
This requires something beyond political promises and occasional announcements of new power projects. It demands sustained investment, credible long-term planning, functional institutions and an understanding of how global developments affect our national ambitions.
The uncomfortable reality is that while we struggle to provide electricity for our people, wealthy nations are racing to secure enormous quantities of power for their machines.
The world will not slow down for us.
And that is the scale of the challenge we must confront.
Thinking and solving challenges is a perpetual thing.
Who’s doing our thinking?
