INTRODUCTION

This chapter aims to demonstrate how the good governance inspired reforms in Nigeria have translated into practice, using a case study of the reform proposals for its electricity sector. The chapter discusses and offers a critique of the current reform approach, particularly its legal and regulatory framework, as well as other salient aspects, such as access of the poor to electricity, rural electrification and consumer rights protection, among other key features.

The study of electricity reform in Nigeria is developed as the basis upon which to show the importance that human rights can have on increasing access to electricity, something that elides this and other neoliberal development inspired approaches. In doing so, and in contrast to the neoliberal approaches, I propose human rights not as a subjective right, but rather as the ethos or moral authority for electricity reform. It is acknowledged that my use of human rights in this context needs to be qualified or justified. To be clear, I am by no means suggesting that human rights can be used to address all the myriad problems of the Nigerian electricity sector, or that they are something that would make the electricity sector work. This would be too demanding, since such a task is uncharacteristic of the basic objective or understandings of the work of human rights.