BusinessDay
Oladehinde Oladipo
May 26, 2026
This installation will bring SBC’s total installed solar power capacity to 12mw, making it Nigeria’s largest industrial player using solar energy to power its operations
Nigeria imported 2.9 million solar panels valued at more than N435 billion in 2025, as chronic electricity shortages pushed households and businesses deeper into a parallel energy economy built on sunshine rather than the national grid.
The figures, drawn from Foreign Trade Statistics compiled by the National Bureau of Statistics and obtained from BusinessDay, place photovoltaic panels among the country’s highest-value imported goods, a distinction that would have seemed improbable a decade ago and now reads as an indictment of decades of stalled grid investment.
Solar panel imports held firm across all four quarters of the year, signalling that demand is no longer seasonal or episodic. First-quarter imports were valued at N125.29 billion, followed by N117.39 billion in the second quarter, N92 billion in the third, and N100.83 billion in the final three months of the year.
Between the first and second quarters, imports slipped 6.3 percent, a move analysts could attribute to inventory digestion or brief demand fatigue following a rush of early-year installations.
The correction deepened in the third quarter, with values falling a further 21.6 percent, the steepest single-quarter contraction of the year. By the fourth quarter, however, imports had rebounded 9.6 percent, consistent with year-end procurement cycles and the kind of accelerated buying that typically follows a brutal dry-season grid collapse.
Measured from peak to trough, the swing from Q1 to Q3 amounted to a 26.6 percent decline. The partial Q4 recovery left the annual total at N435.52 billion, a figure that eclipses the capital budgets of several federal ministries.
Volume varies sharply by panel class
Translating naira values into unit volumes requires assumptions that expose how fragmented Nigeria’s solar market remains. At an average street price of roughly N150,000 per unit — the range applicable to larger, higher-output panels rated between 400 and 600 watts — the N435.52 billion import bill corresponds to approximately 2.9 million units, based on a market survey conducted by BusinessDay.
The picture changes substantially when smaller panels are factored in. Low-capacity units, typically rated between 10 and 100 watts and priced around N25,000, are the entry point for lower-income urban households and rural off-grid users. At that price point, the same aggregate import value implies as many as 17.4 million units entered the country last year. Medium-sized panels in the 150-to-300-watt range, commonly deployed by small businesses and mid-tier residential users, sell for around N66,000 each, putting estimated imports at roughly 6.6 million units.
The spread matters. It suggests Nigeria is not simply importing solar for the affluent few; a significant share of the market is being served by cheaper, lower-output hardware that keeps lights on in kitchens and charges phones in neighborhoods that may see power from the national grid for only a few hours a day, if at all.
Local production ambitions collide with import reality
The surge in foreign panel procurement arrives as the Federal Government publicly champions local manufacturing. Incentive frameworks, tariff considerations, and rhetorical commitments to domestic solar assembly have featured prominently in energy policy discussions over the past two years.
Yet the import data suggests those efforts have done little, so far, to crowd out foreign supply. Nigeria’s manufacturing base lacks the scale and consistency to meet demand that is growing precisely because grid infrastructure, the public good that would ordinarily suppress the need for private solar spending, keeps failing to deliver.
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Dipo Oladehinde is a skilled energy analyst with experience across Nigeria’s energy sector alongside relevant know-how about Nigeria’s macro economy. He provides a blend of market intelligence, financial analysis, industry insight, micro and macro-level analysis of a wide range of local and international issues as well as informed technical rudiments for policy-making and private directions.
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