NISO's Autonomy Hindered by NBET's Influence in Nigeria

The Nigerian Independent System Operator (NISO) was established by the Electricity Act 2023 and formally inaugurated in March 2025 to address the longstanding conflict between operating Nigeria's transmission and managing its electricity market. NISO was intended to function independently from the Transmission Company of Nigeria, allowing for real-time grid operations and market functions with technical rigor and transparency.

However, NISO's autonomy is compromised by the presence of the Nigerian Bulk Electricity Trading Company (NBET), a federal entity that has evolved into a financial intermediary rather than a true bulk trader. This structural issue creates competing interests between the system operator's role in ensuring grid stability and the trader's focus on financial optimization.

NISO's technical team faces challenges in dispatching generation due to NBET's preferential relationships with government-owned generators like the Niger Delta Power Holding Company (NDPHC), which owns over 5,000MW of generation capacity. The lack of Power Purchase Agreements (PPAs) with NBET further complicates dispatch allocation for NDPHC.