Nigeria, Oct. 8 -- Ever since 2021, when my then energy law don, Professor Tayo Bello (a man with three master's degrees and two PhDs, by the way) introduced me to the gospel of privatisation, decentralisation, and deregulation as ways of unlocking efficiency where government control has failed, I have been fascinated with where these principles could apply in Nigeria.

I took that lesson beyond theory. Having worked in a power distribution company, I saw firsthand how efficiency can emerge when entities are allowed to operate outside the kind of bureaucracy and red tape that crippled the old NEPA or PHCN. Of course, the national grid remains too sensitive and too strategic to simply be handed over entirely to private operators. But perha...