By Sufuyan Ojeifo,

There is a point at which a country’s electricity problem ceases to be merely an electricity problem. It becomes a problem of economic geography.

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Where can factories operate with confidence? Where can businesses plan beyond the next appearance of a generator? Where can hospitals, schools, technology companies, markets and households begin to organise their lives around the reasonable expectation that electricity will be there?

This is the thinking behind the latest initiative from the Minister of Power, Joseph Tegbe, to develop what the Federal Government calls Energy Zones – defined corridors where homes, businesses and industries could receive stable, 24-hour electricity.

The proposed zones cover the Lagos axis, the Abuja-Kaduna-Kano corridor and the Enugu-Port Harcourt corridor. Tegbe’s latest move is a meeting with selected electricity distribution companies to begin working through what it would take to make the idea real.

At first glance, it sounds like another promise of uninterrupted electricity in a country that has heard too many such promises. However, there is something more consequential in the architecture of the proposal.

Tegbe is asking Nigerians to look at the power problem differently.

For years, the national conversation has been dominated by generation. How many megawatts are being produced? How much can the transmission grid carry? How many generating plants are working? These are important questions. But electricity does not become useful simply because it has been generated.

It must travel. It must be received. It must be distributed. And ultimately, somebody must be able to use it. That last part has often been treated as the end of the conversation when, in reality, it is where the economic value of electricity begins.

Tegbe has put the point plainly. The constraint is not limited to generation and transmission; it also includes how much electricity can be taken up and delivered at the distribution end.

The proposed Energy Zones are intended to address precisely that gap while improving commercial demand and the revenue performance of the distribution companies.

There is an important idea here.

Nigeria does not necessarily have to wait for every weakness in the electricity value chain to be solved simultaneously before beginning to create pockets of reliability.

A country of more than 200 million people, with enormous differences in industrial activity, population density and commercial demand, may have to proceed through carefully selected economic corridors while the wider system is repaired.

This is not an argument for abandoning the national grid. It is an argument for making the grid more economically purposeful.

The three corridors selected by the Ministry are revealing. Lagos and its adjoining industrial axis represent perhaps the country’s most concentrated commercial and industrial demand.

The Abuja-Kaduna-Kano corridor connects the political capital with major commercial and industrial centres in the North. Enugu-Port Harcourt links important commercial, manufacturing and energy-producing communities in the South-East and South-South.

These are not simply lines on a power map. They are lines on Nigeria’s economic map. That distinction matters.

For too long, Nigerians have experienced electricity largely as a household inconvenience. The light goes off. The generator comes on. A business buys diesel. A manufacturer factors self-generation into production costs. A hospital makes contingency arrangements.

A young entrepreneur learns, often painfully, that the real price of electricity is not what appears on the bill but what it costs to keep the business alive when the supply fails.

A reliable electricity corridor changes that equation.

If a factory knows that a particular industrial cluster has dependable power, investment decisions begin to change.

If a commercial district can plan around predictable electricity, operating costs become easier to manage.

If businesses can depend on supply for most of the day, generators can move from being the first line of defence to being what they were always supposed to be: backup.

This is where Tegbe’s technocratic instincts may prove significant.

His background is not that of a career power-sector operator. His professional experience has largely been in consulting, fiscal and economic reform, institutional transformation and advisory work. That background has been visible in his early approach to the ministry – diagnosis, audits, financial questions, infrastructure bottlenecks, and attempts to identify where one part of the system is preventing another from functioning properly.

His Energy Zones proposal fits that pattern. It treats the electricity market less as a single machine waiting for one dramatic repair and more as a system of interconnected constraints that can be isolated, diagnosed and addressed.

Tegbe had already identified the three corridors as priorities for grid stabilisation, with technical audits intended to establish the condition of critical infrastructure. The latest engagement with DisCos suggests that the idea is now moving beyond technical diagnosis towards the more difficult question of how distribution will work within those corridors.

That is where the hard work begins.

A 24-hour power zone cannot be created by a press statement. It requires generation that is available when needed, transmission capacity that can carry it, distribution infrastructure capable of receiving it, transformers and feeders that can withstand the load, metering that properly captures consumption, customers willing and able to pay, and a commercial structure in which the various participants have an incentive to keep the system working.

It also requires protection. Vandalism and energy theft do not respect administrative boundaries. Neither do faulty equipment, unpaid bills or poor collection practices. Tegbe himself has acknowledged that the sector’s problems reinforce one another. Weak collections affect the market. Market weakness affects maintenance and gas payments. Unreliable supply in turn depresses collections.

This is why the Energy Zone experiment, if it is to succeed, must be judged by more than the number of hours electricity is available.

The real test will be whether reliability begins to produce economic consequences. Does industrial output increase? Do businesses spend less on self-generation? Does investment respond? Do DisCos collect more because customers are receiving a service they can trust? Does the government recover enough value from improved commercial activity to justify further infrastructure investment?

Those are the questions that should eventually accompany the glossy language of 24-hour power.

And there is another question that Tegbe and the Federal Government will have to confront: what happens outside the zones?

Nigeria cannot become a collection of electrically privileged corridors surrounded by communities waiting indefinitely for their turn.

The logic of concentrating investment in high-demand areas can be defended economically, especially if the resulting commercial activity strengthens the wider electricity market.

But the strategy will ultimately have to demonstrate how successful zones become stepping stones towards broader reliability.

That is the difference between an experiment and a system.

There is also a danger in admiring the architecture of reform from the comfort of an office.

It has to be said here that the statement issued by the minister’s media aide was long on ambition and conspicuously short on the details that matter. No timeline. No capacity targets. No specific investment figures. It is the kind of announcement that has, historically, been the precursor to nothing at all.

So Nigerians should watch the idea with interest, but also with the healthy scepticism that comes from decades of promises about electricity.

The minister deserves a measure of credit for at least diagnosing an important part of the illness.

For once, the conversation has shifted from the head to the feet – from generation to distribution, from megawatts to money.

At the same time, the Nigerian people have been given blueprints before. They have learned to admire the drawings while the building crumbles.

The Energy Zones remain a proposal. The government has not yet announced the detailed capacity requirements, implementation timetable or precise infrastructure investments that would make 24-hour supply possible.

That is not necessarily a fatal flaw. It may simply mean the idea is still being worked out.

But it does mean that the language of 24-hour power should be treated as an aspiration until it is matched by the machinery of implementation.

Yet the proposal deserves attention because it reflects a potentially important shift in the way the power problem is being conceived.

Nigeria may not fix its electricity crisis in one heroic sweep. It may have to build reliability corridor by corridor, demand centre by demand centre, and economic cluster by economic cluster.

There is nothing inherently glamorous about such work. It is engineering, finance, regulation, distribution and relentless attention to the weak link in the chain. But perhaps that is precisely the point.

The country has spent decades waiting for the great national electricity breakthrough.

Tegbe’s emerging approach suggests something less dramatic and potentially more practical: make a few economically critical parts of the system work properly, learn from them, strengthen the model, and expand it.

The success of that approach will ultimately be measured not in speeches or megawatts, but in what Nigerians can do with the electricity when it arrives.

Does the factory run a second shift? Does the business hire more workers? Does the hospital keep its equipment running through the night? Does the young entrepreneur stop budgeting for diesel and start budgeting for growth?

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That is where the real power story begins. And that is the standard against which Tegbe’s Energy Zones should ultimately be judged: not by whether 24-hour power sounds impressive in a press release, but by whether the lights stay on long enough for Nigerians to build something with them.

By Zubair, M.O,

The article by Kunle Adesanya is eloquently written but fundamentally misrepresents how state creation works in Nigeria and what H.E Senator Otunba Gbenga Daniel is actually doing.

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It accuses H.E Senator Otunba Gbenga Justus Daniel of deception for doing exactly what the Constitution expects a sponsor of a state creation bill to do.

1. The Senator Never Claimed He Can Create a State Alone

No serious person, and certainly not a two-term Governor and current Senator who is a trained Engineer, believes he can create a state by fiat.

Section 8 of the 1999 Constitution places the responsibility for state creation on multiple institutions, but someone must initiate and drive the process. That is the role of the sponsor.

By Oladapo Sofowora,

On October 1, 1996, a profound historic journey birthed across the vast expanses of the Northwest region when Zamfara State was carved out of the old Sokoto State as a standalone state.

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Despite the state being created by the military administration of the late General Sani Abacha, the birth of the state was greeted with overflowing euphoria from many who believed its a welcoming development to ensure more stability in governance.

The founding fathers of Zamfara envisioned a self-sustaining agricultural giant, proudly flying the banner “Farming is Our Pride” as its motto but also marked with action and not mere words on paper.

With the vast arable agrarian lands and rich mineral deposits the state is blessed with, they imagined a haven of communal peace, where vibrant markets flourished, schools molded brilliant minds, basic amenities were standard and civic dignity was guaranteed to every indigene which would, in turn generate meaningfully development and place the state among the very best in the state and also the region.

Yet, for nearly three decades, that noble vision drifted into a tragic narrative of what could have been a dream come true. Sequential political administrations took the helm, but systemic governance deficits slowly starved the state of its promise also preventing it from reaching its full potential.

Instead of transforming into an economic lighthouse, Zamfara became synonymous with institutional decay, bedridden with insecurity, banditry, kidnapping and illiteracy.

Basic infrastructure withered like a flower with no water supply; state-owned schools were reduced to crumbling dilapidated structures; general hospitals and Primary health centres lacked essential diagnostic tools and basic medications and a chronic backlog of unpaid civil service gratuities spanning over a decade left retired public servants in severe hardship.

Worse still, an escalating rural security crisis took root, driving hundreds of thousands of farmers from their ancestral fields, paralysing interstate commerce and suffocating the state’s economic soul.

For millions of residents, the proud dream of 1996 had morphed into a quiet, painful struggle for survival affecting the survival of the state.

History, however, rarely remains static when decisive leadership intervenes. As Zamfara State approaches its landmark 30th anniversary, the long-standing story of stagnation is undergoing a historic shift.

The turning point arrived with the election of Governor Dauda Lawal in 2023 who defeated an incumbent against all odds; whose “Rescue Mission” agenda did not merely offer political promises but launched a systematic engineering of state affairs.

Governor Lawal took office with a clear diagnostic view of the state’s wounds, He moved away from cosmetic fixes to confront the structural defects that had held Zamfara back for twenty-seven years.

Recognizing that development cannot take root where fear reigns, the governor prioritized security of lives and property above all else. Through the operationalization of the Homegrown Community Protection Guards and strategic collaboration with federal security agencies, the state moved from defense to active deterrence.

Modern operational capabilities, ranging from advanced long-endurance surveillance drones for real-time intelligence gathering to fleets of armored personnel carriers and specialized tactical vehicles, were deployed into high-risk rural corridors.

Critical transport routes like the 108-kilometer Gusau to Dansadau road, once notorious for security risks, were awarded for total reconstruction, allowing agrarian communities to safely reconnect with major markets and reclaim their farming livelihoods.

What distinguished Governor Lawal’s programme from the capital-centric spending that has historically defined Nigerian state governance is its geographic spread.

In Bukkuyum Local Government Area, a region more often associated in national conversation with insecurity than with infrastructure investment, N4 billion has been committed to the 23-kilometre Mallamawa–Zarummai–Bukkuyum road with a spur to Zarummai Masama Road, alongside N1.5 billion for the Bukkuyum–Birnin Zuama–Gummi road.

That the government has chosen to route capital there is itself a statement of intent. In Maradun, N5 billion is allocated to the Maradun–Magami–Faru road and N1 billion to the Maradun–Makera road.

In Bungudu, N10 billion is going into the Daza–Gidan Dawa link to the Sokoto Road dual carriageway and N500 million for the 21-kilometre Tasha Babba–Lambar Kyambarawa Road in Nahuche Ward. In Birnin Magaji, N10 billion is earmarked for the 53-kilometre Gusau–Jauri–Dogon Kade–Nasarawa Mailayi–Nasarawar Godal roads.

The administration has also awarded what is now the longest road project in Zamfara’s history: a 95-kilometre stretch in Tsafe Local Government Area running from Yandoton Daji through Chediya, Doka, Yan Waren Daji, Hayin Alhaji, Bedi, Unguwar Joji, Yankuzo to Tsafe with an allocation of N10 billion.

The Governor has also set aside N5 billion for emergency roads across the three senatorial zones, ensuring that even the most remote communities are not left behind in the infrastructure drive.

Simultaneously, a massive urban and regional renewal initiative was rolled out. Gusau, long criticized for looking more like a neglected outpost than a state capital, was turned into a bustling site of civil infrastructure.

Inner-city arterial roads were expanded and dualized, comprehensive underground drainage networks were engineered to end perennial flooding and modern solar streetlighting systems illuminated major commercial avenues.

Across all fourteen local government areas, legacy projects began taking shape, most notably the Gusau International Airport and its network of connecting transport corridors, designed to position Zamfara as a future hub for regional agricultural export and interstate commerce.

In May 2026, Zamfara made history when the first-ever Hajj flight departed from Gusau International Airport, carrying 415 intending pilgrims aboard a Max Air flight directly to Saudi Arabia.

Governor Lawal described the airport’s construction, which began on June 18, 2024, as a “legacy project of great importance” to his administration, noting that pilgrims who previously had to travel to Sokoto or Kano could now fly directly from Gusau in “less than 4 hours.”

The human capital landscape has experienced an equally dramatic rebirth. In basic and secondary education, the administration addressed fundamental decay by renovating and equipping more than 500 public schools, recruiting and training thousands of new teachers and clearing multi-year backlogs of WAEC and NECO examination fees to ensure that no child’s academic progression was halted by state neglect.

In healthcare, general hospitals across local government areas underwent complete structural overhauls, bringing functional surgical theaters, diagnostic capacity, and reliable maternal care directly to rural populations.

Furthermore, by liquidating over 16 billion Naira in accumulated civil service gratuities, the administration restored basic financial dignity to thousands of senior citizens who had dedicated their working lives to the state.

Governance is ultimately judged by measurable impact, a reality underscored by the broad national recognition conferred upon the administration, including multiple “Governor of the Year” honors for exceptional project execution and public service reform.

Thirty years after its creation, Zamfara State is actively shedding the burdens of its past and rewriting its history.

Through fiscal discipline, physical development and a focus on human dignity, Governor Dauda Lawal is demonstrating that the vision of the founding fathers was never out of reach; it simply required an architect capable of turning the promise of 1996 into enduring reality.

The state tomorrow the 1st of October set to launch its commercial Bi-weekly passenger flight from Abuja to Gusau, a service to be run by XeJet which signifies a significant development that will change the commercial trajectory of the state and also increase trade activities for development.

As Zamfara saunters into its fourth decade, the anniversary committee inaugurated in September 2026, chaired by Deputy Governor Mani Mumuni, has been tasked with delivering a celebration that reflects the state’s journey from creation to resounding transformation from grass to grace.

For Governor Lawal, the message is simple: the Rescue Mission is not a slogan but a delivery framework

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and as Zamfara marks 30 years since its creation, the concrete and asphalt spreading across the state suggest that the aspirations of 1996, development, peace, identity and prosperity, are finally being given a foundation to stand on.