International Best Practices and Participation in a Private Sector Driven Electricity Industry in Nigeria : Recent Regulatory Developments

While developed economies like the United States, the United Kingdom and Germany are often cited as classic examples of successful liberalised and private-sector led electricity markets, events such as: (i) the California electricity crisis of 2000-2001; (ii) the blackouts in parts of North America and Europe in 2003; and (iii) the emerging energy market uncertainties directly or indirectly traced to the evolving international energy decarbonisation policies,all underscores the point that liberalisation and privatisation are not perfect concepts by themselves.There is now a growing consensus that the process of privatisation and liberalisation of energy industries require definite levels of regulatory oversight and commitment to guarantee efficiency, reliability and protect all stakeholders. Notwithstanding the inherent challenges of liberalisation as a means to an end, a set of variables has been generally identified as necessary for an efficient and sustainable private-sector led electricity market.The variables include competition, regulatory transparency and certainty, an apolitical and independent regulator, access to information, efficient cost and price regulation, customer engagement and protection and third party access to essential infrastructure etc. In this light, the aim of this article is to discuss the on-going privatisation and liberalisation process of the Nigerian electricity supply industry; while identifying and commenting on some of the key regulatory instruments produced by the Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission (NERC) as the regulator