Gas suppliers are done waiting. Your electricity is about to get worse.

Nigeria's power plants are currently running on 43% of the gas they need. The reason they're not getting the rest isn't a pipeline problem. It's a payment problem that started in 2013 and nobody has fixed since.

This week, Joy Ogaji, the CEO of the Association of Power Generation Companies, said what everyone in the sector already knew but nobody wanted to say on record: "Yes, it is 120 percent correct to say that the debt is the reason why we are in darkness." The gas suppliers have now told the generation companies directly: no payment, no gas. And if the gas stops, the thermal plants stop. Thermal plants produce about 70% of Nigeria's electricity.

Here's how the debt got this bad. NBET is the government agency that sits in the middle of the power sector. It buys electricity from generation companies and sells it to distribution companies. It hasn't paid in full since privatisation in 2013. Not once. The shortfall grew every month. By December 2024 it was ₦4 trillion. In 2025, it added ₦200 billion every single month. By February 2026, the total was ₦6.8 trillion. By end of March, Ogaji says, add another ₦200 billion.

Of that ₦6.8 trillion, roughly ₦3.3 trillion belongs to gas suppliers. The companies keeping the grid alive haven't been paid. And now they've said stop.

Last Tuesday, the 11 distribution companies were sharing just 3,053MW across the entire country. The thermal plants need 1,630 million standard cubic feet of gas per day. They're getting 692. Nigeria is running its national electricity system at less than half capacity because one government agency hasn't settled a bill in 13 years.

The government's response? Power Minister Adebayo Adelabu spoke through a spokesperson and said it's "being handled jointly" with the Minister of State for Petroleum. Adelabu is reportedly already deep into preparations for his Oyo governorship campaign. He has a day job. It's getting less of his attention.

This was always a political problem dressed up as a technical one. Nigeria has over 200 trillion cubic feet of proven gas reserves. It built the generation plants. It privatised the sector specifically so market discipline would force payment. What the market revealed instead is that when the buyer is a government agency, it can refuse to pay indefinitely and nobody goes to prison. Except in darkness.

The privatisation promised the market would enforce what regulators couldn't. Thirteen years later, the market is threatening to switch off entirely.

Your generator fuel costs went up this week. Your electricity isn't coming. And Tinubu's 2023 campaign video is circulating again. The one where he said: "If I don't give you electricity, don't vote for me."

That video has aged in a particular way.