By Orobosa Omo-Ojo JP,
President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s administration is steadily reshaping the balance of power between Abuja and Nigeria’s 36 states, not principally through the prolonged politics of constitutional amendment, but by using existing constitutional provisions, new legislation and fiscal reforms to bring responsibilities closer to the people.
The emerging shift is most visible in three areas that have historically defined Nigeria’s heavily centralised federation: electricity, policing and the sharing of national revenues.
Taken together, these reforms point towards a more responsive and productive model in which states assume greater responsibility for economic growth, infrastructure, internal security and service delivery, while the Federal Government focuses increasingly on matters that genuinely require national coordination.
The electricity sector provides the clearest evidence of this positive direction.
The Electricity Act 2023 opened the door for states to establish and regulate their own electricity markets, generate, transmit and distribute electricity within their jurisdictions, subject to the statutory framework.
The Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission said in May 2026 that 15 states had already transitioned to regulating their electricity markets, with Edo, Lagos, Ogun, Oyo, Enugu, Ekiti, Ondo, Imo, Kogi, Niger, Plateau, Abia, Nasarawa, Anambra and Bayelsa among them.
This represents a significant and encouraging departure from the old assumption that electricity was essentially an Abuja-controlled enterprise. The practical implication is potentially transformative.
States can now develop electricity solutions around their own economic realities, attract investors into generation and distribution, support industrial clusters and provide power to communities that may remain underserved by the national grid.
For manufacturing, agriculture, small businesses, hospitals, schools and digital enterprises, the significance goes beyond electricity itself. Reliable local power can reduce dependence on diesel and petrol generators, lower operating costs, expand business opportunities and improve productivity.
President Tinubu himself has repeatedly linked power-sector reform to economic productivity, describing electricity as central to improving livelihoods and stimulating industrial, educational and healthcare activities.
The administration’s approach therefore amounts to something larger than a power-sector reform. It is a practical decentralisation of economic responsibility that can unlock innovation and investment across the states. The same positive principle is increasingly visible in the fiscal architecture of the federation.
The Constitution already provides for revenue-sharing among the Federal Government, states and local governments, with the Revenue Mobilisation Allocation and Fiscal Commission playing a central role in reviewing the allocation formula. In August 2026, RMAFC announced that it had completed a comprehensive review of the revenue-allocation formula and prepared legislative proposals for consideration.
The proposed new framework is intended to reflect changing fiscal responsibilities and Nigeria’s current economic realities.
That debate is significant because Nigeria’s federal structure has long suffered from an imbalance in which responsibilities are increasingly decentralised while the resources required to discharge them remain concentrated at the centre.
