Power remains biggest obstacle to industrial growth — Minister

LAGOS—MINISTER of State for Industries, Senator John Enoh, has identified electricity and power constraints as the biggest obstacle to translating Nigeria’s economic growth into real prosperity, saying industries are spending more to generate power for their operations.

Enoh, speaking at Arise TV yesterday , said the country’s 4.43 per cent real Gross Domestic Product, GDP, growth in the second quarter of 2026 was encouraging, but stressed that the government must sustain reforms and accelerate growth.

“I think that in the course of this interview, I mean here and there we’ve mentioned power, mentioned electricity and power,” he said, adding that industries were spending more to provide electricity.

“Our challenge therefore is to make sure that while industry and manufacturers and all that demonstrate that kind of resilience, they’re able to achieve that with lower cost,” Enoh said.

He also identified infrastructure and logistics as continuing challenges, noting that the ministry was working with the African Development Bank on a $368 million facility to support about 70 industrial clusters.

On the power challenge, the minister said the government was pursuing blended power involving “grid power, gas power, renewable and all of that.”

He said the Otun industrial cluster was being used as a model for addressing the challenge, adding that a groundbreaking ceremony was expected there the following week.

On the $1 trillion economy target by 2030, Eno said Nigeria had the capacity to achieve the ambition and possibly do better.

“It’s not an ambition that a country like Nigeria shouldn’t have because I mean, we’ve got all it takes to even do better than that,” he said.

According to him, manufacturing would be central to achieving the target because “we’re not going to achieve that without production. We’re not going to achieve that without value addition.”

Enoh said manufacturing grew by 3.24 per cent in Q2 2026, compared with 1.66 per cent in Q2 2025, representing two successive quarters of acceleration.

He said, “We shouldn’t be celebrating 4.43 per cent,” but added that the figure was significant given where the economy had come from.

On MSMEs, he said government was addressing challenges including affordable long-term finance, bureaucracy, regulatory bottlenecks, skills and training. He disclosed that the Bank of Industry disbursed about N50 billion in 2025, with most beneficiaries being MSMEs, while about N250 billion had been raised in 2026, with a target of about N1 trillion.

Enoh said the five strategic objectives of the Nigerian Industrial Policy had been activated in the ministry’s first 90-day implementation report.

He also said Nigeria remained an attractive investment destination, citing reforms, tax incentives and import duty exemption certificates.

He added that 31 companies responsible for about 220 products had received the African quality mark certification to improve the competitiveness of Nigerian products.