3:30 a.m. Rigasa, Kaduna State. The Door Came Down.

In the early hours of Tuesday, 20 May 2026, operatives of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission surrounded an apartment in the Rigasa area of Kaduna State. They had been tracking the occupant for weeks. Intelligence. Surveillance. Phone triangulation. At exactly 3:30 a.m., they moved in. Former Minister of Power Saleh Mamman — convicted in absentia on 12 counts of money laundering and fraud involving ₦33.8 billion — was arrested alongside two individuals accused of shielding him from the law. EFCC Chairman Ola Olukoyede told journalists in Abuja later that day: "I am happy to announce to Nigerians that at about 3:30 a.m. this morning, we arrested Mr Saleh Mamman somewhere in Rigasa, Kaduna State. This is a test of the commitment of the Federal Government of Nigeria to the fight against corruption." Two people who harboured him were also taken in. The property is under investigation. The EFCC warned that anyone found guilty of sheltering a convict would face prosecution.

The BBC confirmed that Mamman had been in hiding since 7 May 2026, when Justice James Omotosho of the Federal High Court, Abuja, found him guilty of all 12 counts and subsequently sentenced him to 75 years in prison. The judge ordered the sentences to run consecutively — seven years on ten counts, three years on count four with an option of a ₦10 million fine, and two years on count five without an option of a fine. Had they run concurrently, Mamman would have served seven years. Instead, at 68 years old, he faces a term that will almost certainly outlast him.

The Guardian reported that Olukoyede described the arrest as proof of the Federal Government's resolve to intensify the anti-corruption war, warning that "anyone who has dipped into national resources will not go unpunished." Director of Public Prosecutions Rotimi Oyedepo said the process of transferring Mamman to a correctional facility was underway. The EFCC also revealed that additional properties linked to Mamman had been uncovered and that investigations would expand to trace more assets acquired with the proceeds of the crime.

Rarely does a corruption conviction end with the convict actually in handcuffs. Rarer still does it end with consecutive sentencing. This week, both happened. The question is what the conviction means — and what it does not.


The Projects That Were Supposed to End Nigeria's Darkness

The funds Mamman diverted were earmarked for two hydroelectric power projects: Mambilla in Taraba State and Zungeru in Niger State. Mambilla, conceived in the 1970s, is designed to generate 3,050 megawatts — enough to make it Nigeria's largest power plant. Daily Trust reported that the project has been stalled for over 40 years despite billions of naira sunk into it. When completed, Mambilla was supposed to increase Nigeria's current electricity generation by 30 per cent, stimulate economic growth, improve grid stability, and enable power exports to Niger, Togo, Benin, and Chad.

That was the promise. The reality is documented in a devastating Daily Trust investigation published this week: "For six decades, Nigeria has been running on a lie. We are told that electricity is the bedrock of civilisation, that no nation has ever escaped poverty without reliable power. Yet today, Africa's largest economy generates less than 4,100 megawatts for 220 million people — less than a single data centre in Virginia."

The investigation traced a 60-year trail of broken promises. Under Obasanjo, the $16 billion National Integrated Power Project saw $2.3 billion vanish into political campaigns. Under Jonathan, privatisation raised $3.36 billion from selling generation and distribution companies — but the power never came. Under Buhari, the $2.3 billion Siemens deal was meant to deliver 7,000 megawatts. By 2023, only 20 per cent of the work was done, and $280 million had disappeared into "consultancy fees." The national grid collapsed 56 times between 2015 and 2023. By 2026, the sector's total debt had ballooned to ₦6.2 trillion.

The Premium Times reported that NERC data for April 2026 showed Nigeria's grid-connected power plants operated at just 31 per cent of their installed capacity — an average of 4,286 megawatts out of a total installed capacity of 13,625MW. Only 10 power plants out of 28 accounted for 81 per cent of the country's electricity output. Punch reported that grid collapses, though less frequent than in previous years, persisted into 2025 and 2026, sustaining concerns among electricity consumers, manufacturers, and operators over the fragility of the national grid.

This is what Mamman was supposed to fix. He served as Minister of Power from August 2019 to July 2021 under former President Muhammadu Buhari. The BBC reported that during his tenure, he had promised to improve power supply while in office. Instead, the court found that he and his associates diverted at least ₦22 billion — about $14 million — through proxy companies and bureau de change operators into private accounts. The judge, in his ruling, described the conduct as "a gross abuse of public trust" and condemned Mamman for using proxy companies and associates to move funds and benefit from public resources meant for critical national infrastructure.


The Judge's Words That Should Haunt Every Public Official

Justice James Omotosho did not mince words in his judgment. Leadership newspaper quoted him directly: "The sheer greed of the defendant and his comrades in crime is nothing but a downright shameful thing. For a defendant who held a critical position such as the Ministry of Power, rather than being concerned with creating a legacy of solving the epileptic power supply in the country, the defendant began siphoning and converting monies for serious projects into private pockets."

The trial, which began in July 2024, was exhaustive. The EFCC called 17 witnesses and tendered 43 exhibits. A bureau de change operator testified about how over ₦22 billion passed through 12 company accounts without any project execution, with funds converted into foreign currencies and transferred. A retired colonel, Adebisi Adesanya, testified that Mamman allegedly spent ₦20 million from project funds on luxury accommodation. The court also found that Mamman made a cash payment of $655,700 — equivalent to about ₦200 million — for landed property in Abuja, deliberately bypassing financial institutions to avoid detection.

The court ordered the forfeiture of foreign currencies and four Abuja properties linked to him. It also directed him to refund the outstanding balance of the diverted funds. And then came the sentence: 75 years, to run consecutively, to begin from the date of his arrest.


One Minister Jailed. Another Walks Free. The Public Is Watching.

Here is where the story gets uncomfortable. While Mamman was being convicted and arrested, another former Minister of Power — Dr. Olu Agunloye, who served from 1999 to 2003 — stands accused of a far larger crime. Daily Trust reported that Agunloye is alleged to have unilaterally awarded the Mambilla hydro contract valued at $6 billion without Federal Executive Council approval and to have forged documents in the process. His case has dragged for years while Nigeria fights a parallel arbitration in Paris to avoid paying billions in damages.

The contrast is impossible to ignore. One minister — convicted, sentenced, arrested, headed to prison. Another — facing a $6 billion scandal — walking free, his case unresolved. The public sees a glaring disparity, and it raises uncomfortable questions about the selectivity of justice in Nigeria.

The broader corruption picture is even more damning. In January 2026, SERAP sued the Minister of Power and the Nigerian Bulk Electricity Trading company over an alleged missing ₦128 billion in power sector funds. The Punch reported that SERAP argued that "Nigerians continue to pay the price for the widespread and grand corruption in the power sector," adding that granting the reliefs sought would "help combat corruption in the power sector, address ongoing transmission line failures, and improve Nigerians' access to consistent, reliable electricity." That same month, the grid collapsed, plunging the country into darkness — the first of what would become at least two major collapses in the first quarter of 2026 alone.

And then there is the generator cabal. The Sun reported that during the screening of the new Minister of Power, Joseph Tegbe, on 6 May 2026, Senate Committee on Power Chairman Enyinnaya Abaribe warned of a "two-layer cabal" — one inside the Ministry of Power and another in the multi-billion-naira generator import market — that profits from unreliable electricity. Former Power Minister and sitting Senator Danjuma Goje reinforced the point, warning that "some long-serving technical officials benefit from repeated grid collapses through maintenance contracts, emergency repairs and overtime payments." He said bluntly: "When power goes out, some people see opportunity, not crisis."


"Up NEPA!" — A Childhood Prayer That Became a Career

My name is Kingsley Nweke, but everyone calls me King. I am the Events and Activation Officer at Banex Mall. Before this, I earned a Master's in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Portsmouth, where I spent years studying thermodynamics — heat transfer, fluid mechanics, organic Rankine cycles, waste heat recovery. I studied energy systems because I grew up in a country where energy was unreliable. I wanted to understand why the lights went out and what could bring them back.

I grew up in Lagos during power cuts. "Up NEPA!" was a household prayer — shouted with joy when the electricity returned, usually hours after it had left. I sat in the dark watching Batman Beyond on Saturday mornings at Silverbird Cinema, only for NEPA to cut the power during the climax. Generator noise was the soundtrack of my childhood. Diesel smell was the scent of dinner. That childhood taught me that light is not a utility. Light is dignity. And the absence of light — persistent, generation after generation — is a form of theft.

That is why, during my NYSC, I learned solar installation. Panels. Inverters. Battery banks. Cable gauging. Load profiling. I made mistakes — reversed polarity once, touched a hot terminal — and I learned to respect the systems I was building. Later, in Alaba International Market, I sold solar and learned to spot counterfeit components by shape, by weight, by touch, by serial number verification. I built a verification SOP — receipts, serial numbers, signed test videos, two-step sign-off — after a buyer tried to scam me out of ₦180,000 by transferring ₦180 instead. I ran through the market and tracked him to F-Line before he could hide the goods. Trust, I learned, is not a feeling. It is game theory: Tit-for-tat. It is a system to be guarded. And when the system breaks, trust collapses.

That is the thread connecting Saleh Mamman to every Nigerian who has ever sat in the dark. The money he diverted was not an abstraction. It was the transformer that never arrived in a village in Taraba. It was the transmission line that was never built. It was the megawatts that never reached the grid. It was the child who could not study because the generator ran out of fuel. It was the business that could not open because the cost of diesel had tripled. Every naira stolen from the Mambilla and Zungeru projects was a naira taken from the possibility of reliable electricity. That is not corruption. That is a slow, bureaucratic violence inflicted on an entire population.


What Is Actually Happening Inside Banex Mall About This Problem

At Banex Mall, we house tenants who are directly involved in the solutions to Nigeria's power crisis. Solar City, on the second floor of Plot 10, stocks JBL waterproof speakers — but their core business is solar energy products. Evachek Energy, a solar company with an office on the third floor of Plot 10, designs and installs photovoltaic systems for homes, businesses, and institutions. These are not government programmes. These are private-sector responses to a failure of public trust. They exist because the grid does not work, and because Nigerians have learned — the hard way — that waiting for the government to fix the problem is not a strategy.

BusinessDay reported in March 2026 that blackouts are driving more Nigerians off-grid, with solar demand booming. Over the past decade, Nigeria's power grid has suffered nearly 140 recorded malfunctions, with some areas receiving reliable electricity for only five to six hours per day. In the first two months of 2026 alone, the national grid collapsed twice. "For households and businesses running Africa's largest economy," the report concluded, "patience has finally run out."

That impatience is visible in our electronics wing on the ground floor, where inverters, batteries, solar panels, and charge controllers are among the fastest-moving inventory categories. It is visible in the number of business owners in our Mezzanine offices who have installed backup systems because they cannot afford to lose a single productive hour to NEPA's unpredictability. It is visible in the cinema, where every screening — football match, movie premiere, corporate presentation — is backed by a generator tested 48 hours before showtime.

This is not how a country is supposed to function. But it is how Nigeria has been forced to function. And the people who stole the funds that were meant to fix it are only occasionally held accountable.


The 75-Year Sentence Is a Signal. The Question Is Whether It Will Be Heard.

Saleh Mamman is now in EFCC custody, awaiting transfer to a correctional facility. His 75-year sentence — consecutive, not concurrent — is one of the most severe ever handed to a former Nigerian minister. It sends a message. The BBC quoted EFCC Chairman Olukoyede: "For us, getting the convict to serve his jail terms is extremely important in view of the seriousness with which we are tackling corrupt practices."

But a single conviction does not fix a grid. It does not complete the Mambilla dam. It does not recover the ₦33.8 billion that should have been generating megawatts for Nigerian homes and businesses. It does not address the structural rot that Daily Trust documented across six decades and multiple administrations. It does not dismantle the generator cabal that profits from the very darkness the stolen funds were meant to eliminate. And it does not answer the uncomfortable question of why one minister is headed to prison while another — facing a $6 billion scandal — remains free.

What the Mamman case proves is that Nigeria's anti-corruption machinery can work when it chooses to. The EFCC prosecuted for 14 months. It called 17 witnesses. It tendered 43 exhibits. It secured a conviction on all 12 counts. It tracked the fugitive through phone surveillance and intelligence gathering. It arrested him at 3:30 a.m. and placed him in custody. The system, in this instance, functioned.

The question every Nigerian should be asking is: why does it function so rarely, and for whom does it fail?

At Banex Mall, the lights stay on — not because the grid is reliable, but because we built systems that do not depend on it. Solar City sells the panels. Evachek Energy installs them. Our tenants run their businesses on backup power. Our cinema never goes dark mid-screening. That is not a boast. It is a quiet indictment of a country where reliable electricity is still, after 64 years of independence, a luxury rather than a right.

Drive in via Akiogun Road, opposite Maroko Police Station. Park in any of our 1,000+ free spaces. Visit Solar City on the second floor. Talk to Evachek Energy about powering your home or business. The grid may be unreliable. The ministers who were meant to fix it may be in prison or walking free. But the work of keeping the lights on continues — not in government press releases, but in the quiet, persistent efforts of Nigerians who decided long ago that they would not wait for the state to deliver what it has been promising for six decades.


Have you ever lost something important — work, comfort, opportunity — because of a power cut? Do you believe Nigeria's power sector can ever be fixed, or has corruption made that impossible? Tell me in the comments. I read every single one.