When the street siren sounded outside Mr. Kofi’s tailoring shop in Ikeja, Lagos, it meant only one thing: the grid was back. His team had been sitting in the dark for most of the day. They had run out of generator fuel. Mr. Kofi joked that NEPA — local shorthand for the long-defunct agency that once ran the national grid — must have known a visitor was coming, and that’s why they “brought back the light.” He has been running his tailoring business for 25 years. His shop sits in Band A, Nigeria’s highest-priority electricity zone, promised 20 hours of power a day under the tariff reform introduced in April 2024. The fuel to bridge the gaps now costs around ₦1,300 per liter — up from a national average of ₦1,034 in January, according to the Nigerian Bureau of Statistics.

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