Power costs threaten Nigeria’s industrial growth, Enoh warns

Minister of State for Industries, Senator John Enoh, says inadequate and costly electricity supply is the biggest obstacle to Nigeria’s industrial growth. He warned that manufacturers are spending heavily to generate power for their operations.

Speaking on Arise TV, Enoh described the country’s 4.43 per cent real Gross Domestic Product growth in the second quarter of 2026 as encouraging. But he stressed that the government must sustain reforms and reduce the cost of doing business.

Manufacturers need lower costs

Enoh said industries had shown resilience despite persistent power challenges, but businesses must be able to operate at lower costs. “I think that in the course of this interview, I mean here and there we’ve mentioned power, mentioned electricity and power,” he said, noting that industries were spending more to provide electricity for their operations.

“Our challenge therefore is to make sure that while industry and manufacturers and all that demonstrate that kind of resilience, they’re able to achieve that with lower cost,” Enoh said.

He also listed inadequate infrastructure and logistics among the challenges confronting manufacturers.

AfDB facility and industrial clusters

According to the minister, the ministry is working with the African Development Bank on a $368 million facility expected to support about 70 industrial clusters. On electricity supply, Enoh said the government was pursuing a blended power model combining “grid power, gas power, renewable and all of that” to improve energy availability for industrial clusters.

He said the Otun industrial cluster was being developed as a model for tackling the power challenge, with its groundbreaking ceremony expected the following week.

Growth figures and $1 trillion target

Enoh said manufacturing growth had accelerated to 3.24 per cent in Q2 2026 from 1.66 per cent in Q2 2025, marking two consecutive quarters of improvement. However, he cautioned against celebrating the 4.43 per cent overall GDP growth figure. “We shouldn’t be celebrating 4.43 per cent,” he said, while acknowledging that the growth was significant considering the economy’s previous performance.

On the Federal Government’s ambition to grow the economy to $1 trillion by 2030, Enoh said Nigeria had the capacity to achieve the target and potentially exceed it. “It’s not an ambition that a country like Nigeria shouldn’t have because I mean, we’ve got all it takes to even do better than that,” he said.

The minister stressed that manufacturing and value addition would be critical to achieving the target, saying, “we’re not going to achieve that without production. We’re not going to achieve that without value addition.”

Support for MSMEs and quality certification

Enoh said the government was also addressing constraints facing micro, small and medium enterprises, including access to affordable long-term finance, bureaucracy, regulatory bottlenecks, skills and training. He disclosed that the Bank of Industry disbursed about N50 billion in 2025, while about N250 billion had been raised in 2026, with a target of N1 trillion.

He added that the ministry had activated the five strategic objectives of the Nigerian Industrial Policy in its first 90-day implementation report, while 31 companies producing about 220 products had secured African quality mark certification aimed at improving the competitiveness of Nigerian products.

For Nigerian businesses, the message is clear: power costs remain a heavy burden on production, and any sustained drop in energy expenses would directly shape industrial competitiveness and consumer prices.