Today, I visited one of the most critical public-private partnership (PPP) power projects in Abia State: Geometric Power, the parent company of Aba Power, which supplies stable electricity to key communities, companies, industries, and institutions within the state.
Geometric Power is a well-equipped distribution company with serious technology behind it, and it has solved one of Aba’s most persistent problems: reliable power. That problem still persists across much of Nigeria despite billions of naira in federal spending on the sector. Aba Power shows what becomes possible when generation, distribution, and consumption are designed as one system. I expect more foreign direct investment and industrial relocation toward Enyimba City as that reliability compounds.
I met the Chairman of Geometric Power, MIT alumnus Bart Nnaji, who hosted me at the facility and walked me through the operation. Our conversation covered engineering, artificial intelligence, hydropower, computer-aided design, and digitising the power-purchase process for end users, including distribution models that move beyond metering systems that require manual installation before access.
I was also introduced to his son, who is part of the Terrahaptix team, a robotics company in the Federal Capital Territory building drones for agriculture, security, and related use cases.
Beyond the leadership, I sat down with the electrical engineers working across power transmission, gas turbines, distribution, and generation, as well as the computer engineers responsible for designing critical systems that power analytics, monitoring, and reporting across the facility’s overarching infrastructure.
The Geometry Behind the Name
Geometric Power was founded on a simple but powerful idea: electricity works best when generation, distribution, and consumption are geographically compact and tightly mapped. In Aba, industries, markets, and residential clusters sit close together in dense patterns. That “geometry” of demand makes power generation more efficient, reduces losses, and improves billing discipline.
Rather than Nigeria’s traditional model — where power is generated far away and pushed across long, leaky transmission lines — Geometric Power proposed a contained electricity ecosystem. Power is generated locally, distributed locally, and consumed locally within a clearly defined area. The company studied the spatial layout of Aba’s industrial and commercial activity and designed a power system around that reality. Hence the name Geometric.
This thinking culminated in the Aba Integrated Power Project, which comprises a dedicated power plant, a ring-fenced distribution network, and a clearly mapped customer base concentrated in Aba and its surrounding areas.
Why Aba
Aba was a deliberate choice. It is one of Nigeria’s most compact industrial cities, with thousands of small and medium-scale manufacturers operating within a tight radius. From both power-engineering and commercial perspectives, it is almost a textbook case for embedded generation: high demand density, predictable load curves, and short distribution distances.
What This Visit Taught Me
This visit reinforced a simple truth: when infrastructure is designed around people, geography, and real economic activity, results follow. Aba did not get reliable power because the national grid improved. It got reliable power because someone studied the city, understood its geometry, and built a system shaped around that reality. That is the model the rest of Nigeria needs to pay attention to.