By Isqil Najim
The Chartered Institute of Power Engineers of Nigeria (CIPEN) has thrown its weight behind the Federal Executive Council’s decision to establish the Grid Asset Management Company (GAMCO), even as it warned that the new entity could join the long list of well-intentioned but poorly implemented power sector reforms if it is not properly constituted.
In a communiqué signed by its President and Chairman of Council, Engr. Israel E. Abraham, and issued on June 1, CIPEN laid out the technical, legal, and institutional conditions it considers non-negotiable for GAMCO to succeed.
The document is the outcome of a critical stakeholders’ forum the Institute convened on March 18, 2026, which drew regulators, transmission operators, system operators, legal practitioners, financial specialists, and industry executives.
CIPEN’s diagnosis of Nigeria’s power crisis is blunt. The country, it says, does not have a generation problem; it has a delivery problem, noting that Nigeria does not currently have a generation problem but a power delivery problem that is limiting the growth, reliability, and financial viability of the electricity market. Nigeria boasts over 13,500 megawatts of installed generation capacity, declares roughly 8,000MW as available, yet actually dispatches between 3,000 and 5,800MW to consumers.
For CIPEN, the gap is not sitting in the power plants — it is sitting in the transmission and distribution infrastructure that cannot move what is already being produced.
Compounding the physical problem, the Institute said, is a financial one. The sector is currently weighed down by a ₦6.3 trillion legacy debt, driven by a “waterfall” payment structure in which VAT is deducted first, followed by Central Bank loan repayments, leaving almost nothing for the generation companies that need consistent cash flow to fund operations and maintenance. CIPEN insists that settling this debt is a prerequisite for unlocking idle generation capacity, arguing that without addressing it, no amount of transmission investment will deliver meaningful results for Nigerians.
On the structure of GAMCO itself, the Institute backs the idea of a commercial grid asset management platform rather than a conventional government agency — one modelled on frameworks that have worked in Australia, Canada, Germany, and the Nordic countries. Its mandate, CIPEN argues, should be asset ownership, capital mobilisation, and grid expansion, kept separate from the technical system operation role that should remain with the Transmission Service Provider.
The communiqué also raises a legal alarm the Federal Government cannot afford to ignore. A significant portion of the assets GAMCO is expected to manage — those under the National Integrated Power Project (NIPP) — are not solely owned by the Federal Government. They are structured as assets jointly owned by all three tiers of government: Federal, State, and Local. CIPEN is therefore asking a question that has not yet been publicly answered: can the Federal Government unilaterally designate these jointly owned assets as national strategic assets under GAMCO’s management? The Institute is calling for a formal legal and legislative review before any asset transfer proceeds.
It is on the question of who runs GAMCO, however, that CIPEN reserves its sharpest language. The Institute insists that staffing the new company with political appointees, administrators, or generalist managers would not merely be inadvisable but illegal, stressing that the management of the national grid is the practice of power engineering, and that to staff GAMCO with non-registered persons — whether political appointees, administrators, or generalist managers — is not merely inadvisable but illegal under the CIPEN Act 2023. Under that law, every key leadership position in GAMCO, from Managing Director to Head of Asset Management to Head of Grid Operations, must be held by a CIPEN-licensed power engineer. Engineers who compromise standards in the course of GAMCO’s operations, the Institute warned, face disciplinary action, licence suspension, fines, or criminal prosecution.
For GAMCO’s operational roadmap, CIPEN is backing three technical pillars. The first is grid hardening — moving beyond reactive repairs to proactively upgrade ageing lattice towers, reinforce substation foundations in erosion-prone corridors such as the Benin–Lagos axis, and deploy high-temperature conductors capable of handling increased loads.
The second is digital visibility, which involves expanding SCADA coverage to all major substations, installing GPS-synchronised Phasor Measurement Units to detect angular instability milliseconds before failure, and building a digital twin of the Nigerian grid to enable predictive analytics. The third pillar is anti-vandalism technology, including laser perimeter detection, drone corridor patrols, and forensic DNA marking on cables and transformers to provide irrefutable evidence for prosecution of vandals.
On financing, CIPEN is recommending a ring-fenced transmission charge model in which all electricity payments flow into a Central Market Pool, with GAMCO’s charges and system operation fees paid as first-line priority charges ahead of generation and distribution margins. This arrangement, the Institute argues, would insulate GAMCO’s revenue from the dysfunction plaguing DisCo collections and make transmission assets more bankable for long-term infrastructure investors.
The communiqué closes with eight formal recommendations to the Federal Government. CIPEN is calling on President Bola Ahmed Tinubu and the Federal Executive Council to convene a National Energy Policy Harmonisation Workshop before amending the Electricity Act 2023 to give GAMCO statutory authority; to resolve the ownership question surrounding NIPP assets through constitutional and legal clarity; to quantify bankable demand and address gas supply constraints before committing further capital; and to guarantee the Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission’s (NERC) operational and financial independence as a non-negotiable condition for any meaningful market reform.
CIPEN’s conclusion strikes a cautiously hopeful note, stating that if properly executed with policy coherence, legal clarity, professional engineering leadership, ring-fenced financing, and a resolved legacy debt, GAMCO can transform the national grid from a source of national frustration into a platform for national prosperity. The cost of getting it wrong, the Institute made clear, will ultimately be paid by millions of ordinary Nigerians — not by the officials who make the decisions.