Nigeria has been preparing for a sustainable future beyond oil for years. At COP26 in the UK, the country announced its commitment to carbon neutrality by 2060. Shortly after the event, the Energy Transition Plan (ETP) was unveiled, the Climate Change Act 2021 was passed and signed into law, and an Energy Transition Office was created for the implementations. These were impressive efforts, and they truly speak highly of the seriousness of the federal government. However, beyond climate change stress, there’s an angle to look at this issue, because in practice, an important question in this conversation that needs to be answered is: how exactly will Nigeria’s economy be when oil finally stops paying the bills?
For decades, oil has been the backbone of public finance in Nigeria. It funds budgets, stabilises foreign exchange, supports states through monthly FAAC allocations, and quietly props up the naira. Even when production falls or prices fluctuate, the optimism has always been that oil will somehow carry Nigeria through the storms. It is even boldly acknowledged in the available policy document of the energy transition plan that global fossil fuel demand will decline. But it does not fully confront what that decline means for a country of roughly 230 million people whose economy is still largely structured around oil dollars.
Energy transition is often discussed from the angle of the emissions issue alone. However, for Nigeria, it is first an economic survival issue. Evidence already confirms that oil now contributes less to GDP than it used to, but it remains central to government revenue and foreign exchange earnings. When oil revenues drop, the effects are felt in budget shortfalls, rising debt, currency pressure, and inflation. Nigerians experienced this reality during periods of oil price crashes, from 2014 to the pandemic shock.
The Energy Transition Plan promises to lift 100 million Nigerians out of poverty, expand energy access, preserve jobs, and lead a fair transition in Africa. These are necessary goals for a future beyond fossil fuels. But this bold ambition alone does not replace revenue. If oil earnings shrink faster than alternative sources grow, the transition risks deepening fiscal stress rather than easing it. Without a clear post-oil revenue strategy tied directly to the transition, Nigeria may end up cleaner with the net-zero goals achieved, but poorer.
Jobs need to be considered, too. The plan recognises that employment in the oil sector will decline over time. What should be taken into consideration is where large-scale employment will come from. Renewable energy, of course, creates jobs, but not automatically, and not at the scale oil-related value chains once supported, unless deliberately designed to do so. Solar panels assembled abroad and imported into Nigeria will hardly replace lost oil jobs. Local manufacturing, large-scale skills development, and industrial policy are what make the difference, yet these remain weak links in Nigeria’s transition conversation.
The same problem is glaringly present in public finance. States that depend heavily on oil-derived allocations are already struggling to pay salaries, though with improvement after fuel subsidy removal. A future with less oil revenue will only worsen this unless states are supported to proactively build formidably productive local economies. Energy transition, if disconnected from economic diversification, could unintentionally widen inequality between regions and states and also exacerbate dependence on internal and external borrowing.
There is also the foreign exchange question. Oil export is still Nigeria’s main source of dollars. As global demand shifts and revenues decline, pressure on the naira will likely intensify unless non-oil exports rise in a dramatically meaningful way. However, Nigeria’s non-oil export base remains very narrow. Agriculture, solid minerals, manufacturing, and services are often mentioned, but rarely aligned with the Energy Transition Plan in a concrete and measurable way.
The core issue here is not about Nigeria wanting to transition, but that it wants to transition without rethinking how the economy earns, spends, and survives. Clean energy will not automatically fix public finance, stabilise the currency, or replace lost oil income and jobs. Those outcomes require deliberate and strategic economic choices that go beyond power generation and meeting emissions targets. Otherwise, the country will be walking into a future where oil is no longer dependable, yet nothing else has been built strongly enough to pay the bills as oil did.
Isah Kamisu Madachi is a policy analyst and development practitioner. He writes from Abuja and can be reached via [email protected]