Senators are demanding answers after discovering the Nigerian Bulk Electricity Trading Plc operated for a full year with almost no capital release from the federal government.

How does a critical government agency, responsible for trading billions of Naira in electricity, survive without funding? That is the puzzle members of the Senate Committee on Finance are trying to solve. In a tense session on Thursday, lawmakers expressed shock that the Nigerian Bulk Electricity Trading Plc (NBET) received only N60 million out of an appropriated N858 billion in the 2025 budget.

Operating on Fumes

The revelation came when NBET’s Acting Managing Director, Johnson Akinnawo, appeared before the committee to defend the agency`s 2026 budget proposal. The deficit is staggering—NBET essentially ran on less than 0.01% of its approved capital budget. "This is not just a shortfall; it is an abandonment," one senator remarked. The lack of funds threatens to collapse the already fragile liquidity of Nigeria`s power sector.

• The Survival Tactic: Mr. Akinnawo explained that the agency relied on "regulatory income" generated internally to keep the lights on in their own offices, a stop-gap measure that is unsustainable.
• The Debt Trap: The funding gap has plunged NBET deeper into debt, making it difficult to guarantee payments to Generation Companies (GenCos). If GenCos aren`t paid, they can`t produce power, leading to blackouts.
• The Bureaucratic Wall: Despite engagements with the Budget Office and the Ministry of Finance, no tangible action has been taken to release the funds.

A Systemic Failure

The Senate panel, led by Senator Sani Musa, queried how the agency could fulfill its mandate of stabilizing the electricity market under such conditions.Akinnawo warned that without government intervention, the gap between generation costs and allowed tariffs would widen, destabilizing the entire value chain. "The market cannot remain stable on empty promises," he bluntly told the committee.

This inquiry exposes the deep rot in Nigeria’s public finance management, where budgets are passed with fanfare but cash is never released. For the average Nigerian suffering from erratic power supply, the Senate’s discovery confirms a painful truth: the power sector is being set up to fail from the inside out.