Minister says the bill may fall to N4tn after reconciliation. GenCos say the figures are being massaged, the books are still open, and the sector is once again drowning in distrust.
Nigeria’s electricity sector is back in the dock.
And once again, the row is not just about power supply. It is about trust, money, and a market that seems permanently trapped between official optimism and brutal arithmetic.
The Bola Tinubu administration and power generation companies are now fighting over the true size of the debts owed in the sector. The government says the figures being bandied about may be inflated. The GenCos say the state is trying to redraw the ledger without a proper joint reconciliation.
At the centre of the storm is a staggering claim of about N6tn in unpaid obligations. But Minister of Power, Adebayo Adelabu, insists that amount is still under review and may eventually come down sharply.
Speaking in Abuja, Adelabu said the liabilities to GenCos were only estimated and still being reconciled.
He said earlier estimates had already been adjusted, explaining that what was once put at N4tn by the end of 2024 was later audited and agreed at about N2.8tn after interest and foreign exchange elements were factored in.
Now, he says, the final figure could settle around N4tn rather than N6tn.
But the GenCos are not letting that version stand unchallenged.
Joy Ogaji, Executive Secretary of the Association of Power Generation Companies, has demanded full transparency and joint reconciliation. Her position is blunt. This is a bilateral matter, she says, and no single institution should be allowed to dictate the numbers.
She says the last reconciliation meeting involving all parties was in March 2025, and argues that no fresh joint verification has since taken place.
That raises the central question. If no proper reconciliation has been done since March, where exactly did the government get its new figures from?
Ogaji says the process cannot be reduced to one agency’s records. In her view, the real figures can only emerge when all stakeholders sit down together and agree on the components of the debt.
That matters because the dispute is not just about one clean invoice. It is about a messy pile of obligations that may include unpaid generation charges, gas supply payments, foreign exchange differentials, interest, supplementary costs, and other long running liabilities buried inside the power market structure.
Adelabu has tried to widen the frame of the argument by pointing to gas supply obligations. He said at least 60 per cent of the debt burden is tied to gas suppliers, not only the GenCos themselves.
That is revealing.
It means the crisis is not a narrow fight between government and generating firms. It is a deeper breakdown across the entire electricity value chain, from gas supply to market settlement to final payment.
And it helps explain why Nigeria’s power crisis never really ends.
Each round of debt talk produces a new promise, a new audit, a new reconciliation exercise. Then the same old problem returns. Unpaid bills. Gas shortages. Weak remittances. Frustrated investors. Low generation. Poor supply.
The latest clash also underscores the sector’s credibility problem.
If the government is right, then the published N6tn figure is exaggerated and must be corrected with clear documentation.
If the GenCos are right, then the state is once again trying to control the narrative before the full books are opened.
Either way, the public is left staring at a power sector that still cannot offer a transparent, trusted answer to one of the most basic questions in the industry. How much is actually owed?
That question is not academic. It goes to the heart of Nigeria’s electricity collapse.
When GenCos are not paid, gas suppliers are not paid. When gas is not delivered, turbines slow down or stop. When generation falls, supply becomes erratic. When supply becomes erratic, businesses turn to diesel and self generation. And when that happens, the cost of doing business rises for everyone.
This is how the sector keeps eating itself.
The row also comes at a politically awkward time for the Tinubu government, which has repeatedly pitched itself as serious about reforming the economy and attracting fresh investment into power.
But investors do not invest in slogans. They invest where contracts are honoured, debts are settled, and the regulatory environment looks predictable.
Right now, Nigeria still struggles on all three fronts.
The government says reforms are underway. The market says the books are still broken. And the people, as ever, are left in darkness while the arguments continue in Abuja.
Until there is a fully transparent reconciliation process, involving all parties and backed by public documentation, the debt war will remain unresolved.
And so will Nigeria’s electricity crisis.
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