Category: Business Day

After more than a decade of promoting Nigerian and African fashion in Los Angeles, organisers of the Ankara Festival Africa are turning their attention to Nigeria, with plans to establish Lagos as the starting point for a wider expansion across the continent.

The festival, which began in Los Angeles in 2010, was created to promote African culture in the diaspora through fashion, music and entertainment. Organisers now say the growing global visibility of African fashion and music presents an opportunity to bring the platform back to where its cultural story began.

Peter Efezokhae, convener of Ankara Festival Africa, Los Angeles, said the festival had initially focused on Nigerian designers before expanding to creatives from other African countries.

‘We started with Nigerian designers, we had to open it up to other African designers,’ Efezokhae said at a press conference ahead of the Lagos edition.

According to him, the festival’s original mission was shaped by the limited visibility of African culture in Los Angeles and Hollywood when the event began.

‘At that time, African fashion wasn’t popular where we are in Los Angeles and in Hollywood,’ he said, noting that African music and fashion have since gained significantly greater visibility internationally.

Efezokhae said the organisers now believe that part of their work in the diaspora has created an opportunity to bring the platform back to Nigeria.

‘I think it’s important for us to now bring it back home where everything started,’ he added.

The Lagos festival is expected to go beyond a conventional fashion show, incorporating music, food, art, interior design, hospitality and other creative activities.

Laura Udoh, co-convener of the festival, said the Lagos edition would create opportunities for creatives and businesses to connect, collaborate and showcase their work.

‘Aside from the fashion show, which definitely has to be there, the food, the culture, and the place would form part of the experience,’ she said.

Udoh added that music would also be a major component, alongside games and opportunities for participants to network and do business.

Isi Atagamen, who is also a co-convener of the festival, said the aim of the festival is to look beyond fashion to create a broader platform for the creative and hospitality industries.

The plan, she said, is to bring together art, music, fashion and hospitality in a single space where practitioners can showcase their work, build connections and access new opportunities.

‘We want a space where the art and hospitality industry can come together,’ Atagamen said.

The organisers also want the Lagos platform to serve as a bridge between African creatives and the diaspora.

According to Atagamen, the festival will provide an avenue for talent from West Africa to gain visibility among audiences and industry players connected to Los Angeles and the wider diaspora.

The expansion into Nigeria comes as Ankara continues to evolve beyond its traditional use as clothing material.

The festival’s concept document describes Ankara as a cultural medium that has moved across generations and social classes, appearing in fashion, art, design and other forms of creative expression.

The organisers say their ambition is therefore not simply to stage an annual fashion event but to create a platform that documents cultural stories, creates opportunities for creatives and encourages new interpretations of African heritage.

According to the organisers, they are not interested in preserving culture by putting it behind glass. ‘We believe culture stays alive when people continue to use it, question it, reinterpret it and make something new from it.’

For Efezokhae, the festival’s origins were also linked to a desire to change the way Nigeria and Africa were represented in the diaspora.

He recalled that when he moved to the United States in the early 2000s, stories about Nigeria in the diaspora were often dominated by negative narratives around fraud and poverty.

Rather than ignore those realities, he said, the festival sought to put greater attention on the music, fashion and films coming out of Africa.

‘We can’t change everything, but we start in our own little way,’ he said.

Over the years, the Los Angeles festival has featured designers from several African countries and attracted entertainment acts, according to the organisers. Its most recent edition also brought together designers from Burkina Faso, Kenya, Sierra Leone, Nigeria, Senegal and Ghana.

Efezokhae said the event had recently completed its 16th year in Los Angeles, with Hollywood celebrities and media organisations attending the latest edition.

The Lagos expansion is now intended to become the next stage of that journey.

The festival’s organisers say they eventually want the platform to move beyond Nigeria into other African markets and, ultimately, connect African creativity more directly with the global diaspora.

The engagement focuses on training, knowledge development, knowledge exchange, and institutional capacity building as Nigeria explores opportunities to develop SAF as part of efforts to reduce emissions from the aviation sector.

According to a statement signed by the Head of Public Relations, AAAU, the discussions followed a visit by the NCAA Environment Team, Jon McKechnie, comprising an NCAA SAF Technical Expert and an ICAO Consultant, to AAAU for discussions on SAF development and capacity building.

The team was received by Mustapha Sheikh Abdullahi, Ag. Vice-Chancellor of AAAU, alongside members of the university’s management and staff.

Speaking during the engagement, Abdullahi outlined the university’s academic focus on aviation, aerospace and environmental sustainability, as well as the role of the African Centre for Climate Change and Aviation Decarbonization (ACCCAD) in research, knowledge development and capacity building.

He said the discussions built on preliminary efforts initiated in 2025 to examine Nigeria’s potential for Sustainable Aviation Fuel production.

According to him, studies had identified opportunities for SAF production from available sustainable resources, providing a basis for further consideration of the technical, academic and institutional requirements for developing a functional SAF ecosystem.

Abdullahi said the latest engagement would examine the potential role of AAAU as a knowledge and training base for SAF capacity development.

He identified the proposed Training of Trainers (ToT) programme as a key area of collaboration, saying it was designed to develop a pool of professionals and subject-matter experts capable of transferring knowledge and supporting wider capacity development in the SAF sector.

He said the proposed capacity-building activities were consistent with AAAU’s aviation and environmental sustainability mandate and the work of ACCCAD, particularly in climate change, aviation decarbonisation and professional capacity development.

Abdullahi expressed the university’s readiness to host and support SAF-related training and knowledge-development activities, adding that the initiative could also strengthen ACCCAD’s technical foundation and broader capacity-development objectives.

McKechnie, who led the NCAA team, discussed the structure and requirements of the proposed programme, including the technical and knowledge areas to be covered and the academic foundation required to support the initiative.

He also highlighted opportunities for the exchange of tutors, trainers and subject-matter experts among relevant institutions, as well as the institutional infrastructure required to develop, absorb and transfer knowledge in the emerging SAF field.

McKechnie stressed the importance of collaboration among regulators, academic institutions, technical experts, industry stakeholders and other partners, given the multidisciplinary nature of Sustainable Aviation Fuel development.

He said the leadership of ACCCAD and other relevant experts within AAAU would work with the NCAA technical team to further define areas of collaboration, including training, subject-matter expertise, knowledge exchange and the proposed Training of Trainers programme.

The engagement is expected to strengthen the human and institutional capacity required to support Nigeria’s SAF ambitions while deepening collaboration between the aviation regulator and academia on aviation decarbonisation and the development of a lower-emission aviation sector.

George Akume, Secretary to the Government of the Federation (SGF), on Friday, said his office is ready to provide necessary institutional support for all heads of the federal government Ministries, Departments and Agencies to mobilise 10 million votes for President Bola Tinubu, ahead of the 2027 presidential election

This is just as he charged the Forum of CEOs of Federal Parastatals to cascade government reforms and achievements down to the grassroots to counter disinformation and project the true impact of the administration’s policies.

The forum is tasked with the mandate to mobilise a minimum of 10 million votes for the President ahead of the January 16, 2027 presidential election

Akume gave the directives when he received the delegation of the Forum of CEOs of Federal Parastatals, led by its Convener/Chairman and the CEO of National Board for Technology Incubation (NBTI), Kazeem Raji.

Chris Ugwuegbulam, Head, Information and Public Relations, Office of the SGF, in a statement, said Akume, who was represented by the Permanent Secretary, Political and Economic Affairs Office, Bekearedebo Augusta Warrens, commended the ‘Forum for conferring on him the Grand Patron of Forum of CEOS of Federal Parastatals and for organising themselves into a cohesive body with a shared vision, noting that the structures on the ground and mathematical projections make their proposed target of mobilising 10 million votes for Mr President achievable.’

Akume emphasised the critical need for effective grassroots communication to correct false narratives surrounding current economic reforms.

‘In your various domains where your power is operative, ensure that people become aware of these achievements. Push this message down to the grassroots, because one thing I’ve observed in the policy right now is a lot of disinformation.

This reform policy is not meant to imprison or impoverish Nigerians, and that is the narrative that has been spread down to the grassroots. Push this message to help promote the image of this administration.’

He noted that as the main drivers of federal government projects, the Forum is best positioned to actively promote and pursue the Renewed Hope Agenda of President Bola Tinubu within their respective agencies and domains.

He assured the CEOs that the Office of the Secretary to the Government of the Federation (OSGF) will provide all necessary institutional support required to achieve their strategic goals.

The SGF also urged the leadership to maintain momentum and establish a structured framework for ongoing collaboration.

Akume stressed the importance of purposeful and effective communication between the Forum and the OSGF to ensure proper tracking of their objectives and strategic initiatives moving forward.

For founders, rising revenue is often the clearest indication that something is working. More customers, more stores, larger orders and expanding distribution all appear to tell the same story: the business is succeeding.

Investors notice growth too. Revenue is easy to measure, easy to communicate and easy to celebrate.

But there is an uncomfortable truth behind some rapidly growing businesses: A company can be getting bigger while simultaneously becoming weaker.

Revenue tells us how much a business sells. It tells us far less about the quality of those sales, what they cost to generate, or whether they are creating lasting value.

That distinction matters enormously for Africa’s consumer businesses.

Growth Is Not the Same as Health

Imagine two consumer companies.

The first generates N1 billion in revenue from customers who repeatedly purchase its products. Its margins are healthy, inventory moves efficiently, costs are controlled and each year the business generates increasingly predictable cash flows.

The second generates N2 billion.

But it relies heavily on discounts to drive sales. Customers rarely return without another promotion. Inventory sits for months, expansion consumes cash and margins deteriorate as revenue increases.

Which is the stronger business?

The headline numbers suggest the second company.

The underlying economics may tell a very different story.

This is why one of the most important questions founders and investors can ask is not simply, ‘How fast are we growing?’

It is:

‘What kind of growth are we creating?’

The Quality of Revenue

Not all revenue is equal.

High-quality revenue tends to be repeatable, profitable and increasingly predictable.

For a consumer business, this might mean customers returning because they genuinely value the product rather than because they received another discount. It may mean distribution channels where the economics remain attractive after logistics and retailer margins are considered. It may mean expanding product lines because customers are asking for them rather than because the company is searching desperately for another source of sales.

These distinctions become increasingly important as businesses scale.

Revenue generated at the expense of margin can create the appearance of momentum while quietly weakening the company underneath.

Growth should strengthen the economics of a business, not disguise them.

When Growth Consumes Cash

There is another paradox founders often discover too late: growth can create a cash problem.

A consumer company experiencing increased demand may need to purchase more inventory, increase production, extend credit to distributors, hire employees or invest in logistics long before customers ultimately pay.

Revenue rises.

Cash disappears.

This is particularly important in markets where financing remains expensive and working capital is difficult to access.

Nigeria’s economic environment makes this discipline especially relevant. Although macroeconomic conditions have begun to stabilise, household incomes remain under pressure and the cost of capital remains high.

In that environment, businesses cannot afford growth at any price.

Every naira deployed into expansion must work harder.

The Metrics Behind the Headline

Revenue deserves attention. But it should rarely be considered in isolation.

Founders building for scale should understand what sits beneath it.

Are gross margins strengthening?

Are customers returning?

How quickly is inventory moving?

How much working capital does each stage of growth require?

Is customer acquisition becoming more efficient?

Does opening another location improve the economics of the company-or simply increase its size?

These questions are less exciting than announcing a revenue milestone.

But they are far more important.

They reveal whether growth is creating value or merely creating activity.

Good Growth and Bad Growth

Good growth makes a business stronger.

It creates operating leverage, deepens customer loyalty, improves purchasing power, strengthens distribution and generates the cash required to invest in the next stage of development.

Bad growth does the opposite.

It adds complexity faster than capability. It increases revenue while compressing margins. It requires increasingly larger amounts of capital simply to sustain itself.

From the outside, both businesses may appear to be growing.

Eventually, however, the difference becomes impossible to hide.

Building Better, Not Simply Bigger

There is understandable pressure on African founders to demonstrate growth.

Capital providers want traction. Markets reward momentum. Entrepreneurs themselves are ambitious and eager to expand.

But scale should never become an exercise in pursuing size for its own sake.

The strongest businesses are not necessarily those that grow fastest.

They are the businesses whose economics become stronger as they grow.

For founders, this requires the discipline to occasionally resist attractive-looking growth when the underlying economics do not make sense.

For investors, it requires looking beyond the headline revenue number and understanding the machinery producing it.

And for Africa’s consumer economy, it means changing how we define business success.

Revenue matters.

Growth matters.

But neither tells the whole story.

Because ultimately, revenue can make a business look successful.

The quality of that revenue determines whether the success can last.

A friend once questioned: ‘Do they learn leadership?’ At first, I thought about my own education. During my degree in Business Administration, I remember taking a course titled Leadership, that lasted eight weeks. I wrote, on average, about ten essays, completed two graded quizzes, and sat for an examination.

And yet many still walk around expecting social conditioning to somehow produce leadership behaviour. But my own experience of leadership did not begin with social conditioning because people immediately imagine that being the firstborn meant I was inherently leadership material. Ask my siblings; I was too fragile for that.

How did it happen then? At 22, I was seeing schools with dilapidated libraries and thinking, these children need books; perhaps I should do something about it. And I remember nailing a partnership with Heinemann Books. I had also been the child who was a Brownie, who genuinely thought she could save the world. Perhaps I did.

But what I did not yet understand was that the responsibility of a calling is only the beginning of leadership. Business Administration-and that leadership course in particular-began teaching me something my enthusiasm could not: that wanting to solve a problem is not the same as knowing how to lead its solution. You need judgement. You need strategy. You need to understand people, institutions, resources and incentives. You need to make decisions when the answer is not obvious. You need to stay when the excitement wears off. You need to persuade people who do not already agree with you. And sometimes, you need to carry responsibility for an outcome that does not go according to plan.

The Problem with Relying Solely on Conditioning

As I earlier explained, it was quite counterintuitive for me to be a leader. You can ask my primary and secondary school peers. And that is the thing about relying on social conditioning alone to reproduce leadership behaviour: people are not always equally socialised or given equal opportunities to practise agency, risk-taking, confrontation or decision-making.

We hold boys to a different set of expectations. They are often encouraged to be bold, take risks, speak up and take charge. Girls, on the other hand, are often encouraged to be caring, polite, accommodating and protected. Over time, these expectations can shape the behaviours people practise and become comfortable with. Assertiveness, agency and independence become more strongly associated with masculinity, while care, deference and receptiveness become more strongly associated with femininity.

There is nothing inherently wrong with either set of qualities. The problem begins when we treat them as opposites, or assume that one belongs in leadership while the other does not. A good leader needs both. You need the courage to make a difficult decision and the empathy to understand its consequences. You need the confidence to speak up and the humility to listen. You need the ability to take charge and the willingness to collaborate. You need firmness without becoming domineering, and care without becoming conflict-avoidant. When social conditioning gives people unequal opportunities to practise these different capacities, however, we can end up reproducing stereotypes rather than developing leaders.

Make Leadership Healthier, Not Easier

Some people have argued that, in our effort to make workplaces more inclusive, we are simply trying to make things easier for women. No. We are trying not to reproduce trauma. We are trying not to codify harmful norms. We are trying to build workplaces where women do not have to endure dysfunction or unnecessary hardship simply to prove that they belong. But there is an equally important conversation we need to have. If we have spent years challenging leadership models built around aggression, emotional suppression, constant competition, and the idea that exhaustion is evidence of commitment, we must also be careful not to swing to the other extreme. We cannot prepare women for leadership by protecting them from everything that makes leadership difficult. Because leadership is difficult.

Leadership sometimes means making a decision when everyone will not agree. It means delivering difficult feedback, disappointing people, holding someone accountable, and making an unpopular call. It means sitting with ambiguity, taking responsibility when the outcome is uncertain, and having conversations you would rather avoid.

It means withstanding criticism. It means carrying the consequences of a decision. It means saying no. It means making decisions with incomplete information. And sometimes, it means choosing what is institutionally right over what is personally comfortable. These are not male qualities. They are leadership capacities.

The objective, therefore, is not simply to get more women into leadership. It is to prepare women to exercise leadership. Getting women through the door is representation. Preparing them to make difficult decisions, exercise authority, navigate conflict, withstand pressure, and carry responsibility is leadership development. And perhaps that is the balance we need to find: remove unnecessary hardship, but do not remove necessary challenge.

A Real World Example

Perhaps this is why I think of Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala. In an interview about taking on the leadership of the World Trade Organization, she was asked about what she described as an ‘impossible job.’ Her response was revealing: ‘maybe I’m a masochist, and I like challenges.’

But the point is not that women should enjoy suffering. It is that leadership will sometimes place you in situations where there is no easy option. Okonjo-Iweala has had to navigate those kinds of situations precisely. As Nigeria’s Finance Minister, she led the country’s delegation in the 2005 Paris Club negotiations, at a time when Nigeria’s public-sector debt stood at about $36.2 billion, including roughly $30 billion owed to Paris Club creditors. Later, during the COVID-19 pandemic, her work with Gavi involved confronting another kind of difficult problem: how to secure access to vaccines in a world where supply was scarce, and countries were competing for doses.

These are not simply stories about a woman occupying an important position. They are stories about judgement, negotiation, strategy, uncertainty and consequence. They remind us that preparing women for leadership cannot mean preparing them only to be visible, collaborative or inspiring. We have to prepare them to carry responsibility when the answer is unclear, the stakes are high, and somebody still has to make the decision.

Final Thoughts

So, do they learn leadership? I think we have to stop treating leadership as something that people simply absorb from their environment and start treating it as something we intentionally develop.

Social conditioning matters. It shapes what people believe they are capable of, the risks they are encouraged to take, the authority they are comfortable exercising, and the behaviours they get to practise. But conditioning is not leadership development. If anything, relying on it alone can reproduce the very inequalities we are trying to change.

We should give girls opportunities to take risks, make decisions, disagree respectfully, solve problems, manage resources, fail, recover and try again. We should teach women not only how to enter rooms, but how to use their voice when they are in them. And perhaps this is where the conversation about women and leadership needs to mature.

We should not have to make women suffer to prove that they are capable of leading. But neither should we confuse a healthier leadership environment with an easier one. The goal is not to protect women from every difficult experience. The goal is to ensure that they encounter necessary challenge without unnecessary harm because leadership will always ask something of us.

And sometimes, as Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala’s example reminds us, to walk towards problems that other people might reasonably consider impossible.

When Oloruntomi Akintade left banking to pursue beauty full-time, she was not simply changing careers. She was betting on an industry that was still largely informal and relatively fragmented in Nigeria.

Today, Akintade is the founder of YBB Beauty International, with operations in Abuja and Lagos, and is recognised in her biography as the artist who introduced Nano Brows to Nigeria.

Her journey reflects a broader shift in Nigeria’s beauty industry, where technical expertise, specialised services and professional standards are increasingly becoming differentiators.

Akintade’s entry into beauty began long before YBB Beauty. As a secondary-school student in Lagos, she was already known for styling her friends’ hair. After studying Sociology at the University of Lagos and completing her national youth service in Abuja, she launched a beauty business, Maquilage by Tomi, while pursuing a career in banking.

She subsequently worked with Zenith Bank and FCMB, maintaining the two careers simultaneously for several years. The decision to make beauty her primary career came after encouragement from a fellow beauty technician, Onyekachi of Beauty Ateliers.

Akintade eventually applied the discipline she had acquired in banking to an industry she had always been passionate about.

‘I chose beauty, but I chose to pursue it with the rigour I had learned in banking,’ is effectively the trajectory reflected in her professional journey.

Akintade’s transition into permanent makeup was deliberate.

In 2017, she travelled to the United Kingdom to train in permanent makeup, where she graduated at the top of her class. She later undertook additional cosmetology training in the United States, expanding her knowledge beyond the practical application of beauty techniques into the science underpinning aesthetics.

Back in Abuja, she established her practice, initially offering frontal installations, microblading and lash extensions.

But rather than continue operating as a generalist, Akintade chose specialisation.

Her focus increasingly shifted towards brows and lashes, with an emphasis on precision and results. That decision would eventually provide the foundation for YBB Beauty’s positioning in the permanent makeup market.

The pivotal moment came with Nano Brows.

The technique, which emerged from Korea around 2018, caught Akintade’s attention.

According to her biography, she searched for Black practitioners who had mastered the technique and did not find any at the forefront of the field.

Rather than seeing this as a limitation, she saw a market opportunity.

By 2019, she had committed to mastering Nano Brows and began demonstrating the technique

on models in Abuja. At the time, microblading was significantly more familiar to Nigerian consumers, while Nano Brows remained largely unknown.

The early results helped establish the proposition.

Clients responded to the natural appearance of the healed brows, while the successful trials helped reduce some of the hesitation surrounding permanent makeup.

By 2020, Akintade had opened her Lagos studio, further establishing YBB Beauty’s presence and her position as a pioneer of Nano Brows in Nigeria.

The evolution of YBB Beauty reflects an approach that places technical expertise at the centre of the business.

Akintade’s operating philosophy is built around three principles: safety, science and professionalism. The company positions itself not simply as a beauty service provider but as a solution-driven business focused on addressing clients’ aesthetic needs through considered procedures.

That positioning is particularly relevant as Nigeria’s beauty economy becomes more sophisticated.

For operators in the permanent makeup space, differentiation is no longer limited to aesthetics.

Training, hygiene, technical knowledge, client experience and consistency can determine the sustainability of a beauty practice.

Akintade’s strategy has therefore been to build credibility around the craft itself.

The biography notes that she has prioritised results over certificates, reflecting an emphasis on demonstrated technical ability rather than credentials alone.

Akintade’s ambitions extend beyond the growth of her own client base. She intends to train more artists and contribute to a more inclusive permanent makeup industry in Africa.

Her outlook is that as the technique develops, Nano Brows will become an increasingly important part of the repertoire of professional permanent makeup artists.

This could prove significant for an industry where technical knowledge is often acquired through individual practitioners rather than structured professional ecosystems.

For Akintade, building YBB Beauty is therefore also about building knowledge around the discipline.

The company’s name, YBB, stands for Young Black Billionaires, reflecting the founder’s ambition to build a beauty house centred on empowerment, ambition and a new standard of practice.

Akintade’s journey illustrates the commercial possibilities that can emerge when a traditional career skill set is applied to a creative industry.

Banking gave her exposure to structure and discipline. Beauty gave her the opportunity to build around a personal passion. International training provided technical depth, while Nano Brows offered a specialised category through which she could differentiate her business.

Today, YBB Beauty operates across Abuja and Lagos, while Akintade is focused on expandingthe pool of trained practitioners and shaping the future of permanent makeup in Nigeria. Her story is ultimately not just about eyebrows.

It is about identifying an emerging category early, developing the expertise to compete within it and building a business around a standard of service.

For a Nigerian beauty industry moving increasingly towards specialisation and professionalisation, Tomi Akintade is betting that the next phase of growth will belong to practitioners who can combine artistry with science, business discipline and technical excellence.

Femi Gbajabiamila, Chief of Staff to President Bola Tinubu, has denied any involvement in the activities of the purported Presidential Foreign Intervention Promotion Council, saying he has never betrayed the President’s trust.

Gbajabiamila clarified allegations linking him to the organisation and claims that he authorised its activities.

The House of Representatives committee investigating the purported agency has, however, said its preliminary findings found no evidence that Gbajabiamila approved, established or participated in its operations.

Instead, the committee said documents before it showed that the Chief of Staff took steps to alert security and investigative agencies after concerns about the organisation were brought to his attention.

The committee said Gbajabiamila communicated with the Nigeria Police Force, the Office of the National Security Adviser, the Department of State Services and the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, while also initiating administrative checks.

The panel further found that a letter purportedly appointing Prince Adeniyi Adeyemi as Director-General of the PFIPC and allegedly bearing Gbajabiamila’s authority was fabricated.

Evidence obtained from the State House showed that no such appointment was made or approved by the Presidency and that Gbajabiamila neither issued nor signed the letter, according to the committee.

The committee also found that the purported organisation had no valid legal basis, saying it could not identify any authentic Act of the National Assembly, executive order or other lawful instrument establishing the PFIPC.

Its preliminary findings further uncovered alleged irregularities involving official documents, bank accounts and entities linked to Adeyemi.

The panel said its investigation identified about 58 bank accounts linked through identifying information associated with Adeyemi, with more than 30 accounts apparently operated in the names of several agencies, companies, foundations or related entities. It stressed that the investigation was ongoing and that not every identified account or transaction had been established as unlawful.

The development followed separate allegations made against Gbajabiamila by Adeyemi, who was accused of operating the purported agency.

Gbajabiamila has rejected the allegations and previously instituted a N15 billion defamation suit against Adeyemi at the High Court of the Federal Capital Territory.

In the suit, the Chief of Staff denied ever meeting Adeyemi, communicating with him or authorising anyone to demand or receive money on his behalf.

Nigeria’s electricity decentralisation is moving faster as a regulatory idea than as an investment reality. More than three years after the Electricity Act 2023 opened the door for states to establish and regulate their own electricity markets, the central question is no longer whether states should have greater responsibility for power. It is whether they have the institutional capacity, commercial structures and financial credibility to turn regulatory autonomy into investment and, ultimately, more reliable electricity.

The stakes are high because without new investment, businesses will remain trapped in the expensive cycle of unreliable grid supply and self-generation. Manufacturers and other commercial users will continue diverting capital to diesel, gas and alternative power systems instead of expanding production. Smaller businesses, which have less capacity to absorb energy costs, will face even greater pressure. The resulting costs will eventually be reflected in prices, productivity, employment and household incomes.

Decentralisation does not create electricity by itself. It changes who regulates the market. Investors still need creditworthy customers, predictable tariffs, reliable payment mechanisms, adequate demand and clarity over who carries the risks when projects encounter problems. Where these conditions are absent, a state can have legal authority over electricity without having a market capable of attracting the capital required to develop it.

This creates a risk of a two-speed electricity economy. States with stronger institutions, deeper commercial markets and greater purchasing power are likely to attract investment more easily than states where demand is fragmented, and public finances are weaker. Without mechanisms for broader regional cooperation, decentralisation could reinforce existing economic disparities by concentrating new power infrastructure in states that are already more commercially attractive.

That should not become an argument for delaying reform. One of the strongest reasons for giving states greater control is the opportunity to develop solutions suited to their economic circumstances. A manufacturing centre may require a different electricity strategy from an agricultural state, while states with relatively small markets may gain more from cooperation with neighbouring jurisdictions than from attempting to build standalone systems. The emerging approaches in states such as Enugu, Kano, Katsina and Jigawa show the potential for different models to develop.

But experimentation will produce results only if it is accompanied by commercial discipline. States assuming electricity responsibilities need to demonstrate that their markets are ready for investment through credible regulatory, financing, and infrastructure plans. Investors should be able to determine how regulators will be funded, how tariffs will be set, how tariff shortfalls will be managed, and what protections exist when public or private customers fail to pay for electricity supplied.

Payment security is particularly important. An investor committing substantial capital to generation cannot rely solely on the expectation that electricity purchasers will eventually pay. Where necessary, states and market participants should develop bankable arrangements such as escrow accounts, guarantees, letters of credit and other credit-enhancement mechanisms. The precise structure will differ between markets, but the principle is universal: investors need reasonable certainty about how revenues will be collected and how risks will be allocated.

States should also resist the temptation to build isolated electricity markets where the economics do not support them. Regional cooperation could allow neighbouring states to pool demand, share infrastructure and create larger markets capable of attracting investment that would be difficult for an individual state to secure. Harmonised rules and interconnected markets could reduce regulatory fragmentation and give investors a clearer route into multiple customer markets.

The federal-state relationship must be equally clear. Decentralising electricity regulation does not automatically decentralise the national transmission grid, gas supply, upstream energy costs or every component of power infrastructure. Unless responsibilities are clearly defined, disagreements over licensing, infrastructure access, tariffs and system operations could become new barriers to investment. Nigeria therefore needs a framework in which federal and state institutions know where their responsibilities begin and end and how disputes will be resolved.

Transparency should accompany this process. States assuming electricity responsibilities should publish measurable targets for generation, distribution, connections, reliability, investment and service quality. Regulators should be judged by outcomes rather than simply by the creation of institutions. Investors, businesses and consumers need to see whether the new system is producing measurable improvements.

Nigeria has taken an important step by giving states greater participation in electricity regulation. But the reform will be judged by what follows the legislation and the establishment of regulators. Decentralisation will succeed only when regulatory autonomy produces commercially viable markets, attracts private capital and delivers more dependable electricity to businesses and households.

The objective should therefore not be to create 36 electricity markets merely because the law permits them. It should be to create electricity markets that are investable, accountable and capable of serving the economies around them. Nigeria must ensure that decentralisation does not simply distribute regulatory responsibility for the power sector; it must distribute the capacity to make the sector work.

Udu Technologies, a Nigerian technology startup, is challenging the high cost of foreign AI computing with a GPU cloud platform offering access to specialised computing power for less than $1 an hour.

The company’s Africa GPU Hub, launched through its AGHCloud.ai platform, is designed to give African developers, businesses and governments access to the computing infrastructure needed to train and run artificial intelligence models without building their own GPU facilities.

Graphics processing units (GPUs) are critical to AI workloads, including training large language models and running complex applications. However, access to high-performance GPUs remains limited and costly across many African markets.

Udu said its platform provides pre-configured GPU environments with tools such as PyTorch, TensorFlow, vLLM and LoRA, allowing users to start AI workloads without the time and capital required to establish dedicated infrastructure.

‘For organisations, this can significantly reduce the technical and financial barriers associated with accessing high-performance computing,’ said Alexander Tsado, chief executive officer of Udu Technologies told BusinessDayThis gives Udu infrastructure across seven African countries as it seeks to bring AI computing closer to users and data on the continent.

Oluwafunmilayo Olumoko, head of customer success at Udu Technologies, said the regional infrastructure could support data residency requirements and the development of sovereign AI infrastructure.

The company is also targeting the cost of running AI applications after development. Udu said its dedicated GPU virtual machines and optimised open-source large language models can deliver up to 60 percent savings in token costs.

Udu said the Africa GPU Hub has already served 2,000 developers and supports more than 30 government AI use cases in areas including agriculture, customs, digital public infrastructure, mining and education.

The startup is also using its partnership with Alliance4AI, an AI ecosystem organisation, to support skills development alongside access to computing infrastructure.

Udu said improving access to GPUs without developing the skills to use them would not be enough to expand AI adoption in Africa.

The company’s launch comes as African organisations seek greater access to AI infrastructure while governments and businesses increasingly focus on where their data is processed and stored.

By combining sub-$1 GPU access with infrastructure deployed within African markets, Udu is positioning its platform as an alternative for organisations that currently depend on external computing resources for AI workloads.

Former President Goodluck Jonathan has warned politicians participating in the 2027 general elections against manipulating the electoral process or engaging in misconduct in the pursuit of victory.

Jonathan gave the warning at a public lecture organised to mark the 80th birthday of Kanu Agabi (SAN), former Attorney-General of the Federation and Minister of Justice.

His remarks came as political parties and candidates intensify preparations for the 2027 elections, with the presidential campaign season already underway.

The former president, who conceded defeat to the opposition in the 2015 presidential election, said politics has established rules that must be respected by all contestants.

Jonathan said, ‘In politics, it is a disaster. People do stupid things, also even criminal things, and they will tell you it is politics. It is not politics. Politics has rules.’

He likened electoral contests to a football match, stressing that candidates must operate within the rules governing elections.

‘Politics is like a soccer match. You play according to the rules, and that is why the courts step in to mediate if you go against the rules. Otherwise, you can do anything and win an election and walk away,’ he said.

Jonathan also spoke on corruption, saying Nigeria’s anti-corruption challenge cannot be solved solely through legislation or the activities of law-enforcement agencies.

According to him, the country must develop a culture in which ethical conduct is valued and public office is regarded as a trust.

‘The challenge before Nigeria is not simply to make laws against corruption. It is to build a culture in which ethical conduct becomes the norm, where public office is treated as a trust, and where institutions are strong enough to uphold accountability,’ he said.

Recalling his experience in Rwanda, Jonathan said social norms in the country discourage public officials from accepting gifts that could compromise public trust.

Jonathan further urged Nigerians to take collective responsibility for fighting corruption, stressing that the task should not be left solely to statutory agencies.

‘All of us Nigerians have a major role to play if we want to suppress corruption, not just the bodies established by law to discipline and punish those who do it,’ he said.

He also underscored the role of the judiciary and other institutions in enforcing accountability and ensuring that violations of established rules attract appropriate consequences.