Yemisi Izuora
Nigeria’s energy poverty has delivered a major blow on the manufacturing sector of the economy as manufacturers continued to struggle with rising cases of inefficiencies in the power sector.
According to information provided by the Manufacturers Association of Nigeria (MAN), manufacturers spent an estimated ₦1.35 trillion on alternative power in 2025 as unreliable and costly electricity continued to pile pressure on production.
The MAN, disclosed the figure at its 54th Annual General Meeting and Made-in-Nigeria Exhibition in Lagos.
President of the Association, Francis Meshioye, said the expenditure represented about a 23 per cent increase from the ₦1.1 trillion manufacturers spent on alternative energy in 2024.
According to him, businesses are being forced to commit huge resources to generating their own electricity while simultaneously battling high production costs, foreign exchange pressures, expensive financing, logistics challenges and weak consumer demand.
Meshioye warned that the cost of self-generated power was becoming increasingly difficult to sustain, particularly as some manufacturers shut factories or scale down production.
He said money being spent on alternative energy could have been invested in expanding factories, acquiring new technology and improving productivity.
The MAN president also raised concerns over Nigeria’s dependence on imported raw materials.
According to him, the country imported about ₦3.53 trillion worth of raw materials in the first half of 2025, including approximately ₦1.72 trillion sourced from Asia.
He said the figures demonstrated the need for Nigeria to develop local sources of raw materials and intermediate products to strengthen domestic manufacturing.
Meshioye identified reliable electricity, affordable financing, industrial inputs, efficient logistics, regulatory stability and increased productivity as critical to making Nigerian manufacturers more competitive.
He noted that manufacturing capacity utilisation improved from 51.33 per cent in the first quarter of 2025 to 57.50 per cent in the second quarter.
However, he warned that the improvement could be eroded if the structural problems facing manufacturers remained unresolved.
The AGM is themed “Leveraging National Industrial Policy to Position Nigeria as Africa’s Industrial Hub.”
Director-General of the National Institute for Policy and Strategic Studies, Ayo Omotayo, also stressed that manufacturing would have to contribute significantly to the economy for Nigeria to achieve its ambition of becoming a $1 trillion economy.
Omotayo said having an industrial policy alone would not deliver the desired results without effective implementation