Inside Nigeria’s $20 billion Secret Nuclear Program

Nigeria's national grid collapses to zero megawatts roughly once a month. 242 million people lose power simultaneously. Generators burn through $14–22 billion in fuel every year. And somewhere in Kaduna State, at a university most Nigerians have never thought about in this context, a nuclear reactor has been running safely for over 22 years. This is the story of a 50-year nuclear program that began under a military dictator in 1976, survived six regime changes, produced a working research reactor, attracted Russia, China, and South Korea to compete for a multi-billion dollar contract — and still hasn't generated a single watt of electricity for the grid. In this documentary, I trace the full history: from General Obasanjo's Decree No. 46, to the midnight extraction of weapons-grade uranium from a university campus during a curfew in northern Nigeria, to the May 2025 strategic pivot toward small modular reactors, to the geopolitical chess match unfolding right now between Rosatom, CNNC, and KHNP for control of Nigeria's nuclear future. The question isn't whether nuclear technology works. The reactor at Zaria proved that two decades ago. The question is whether Nigeria's political system can commit to a project that takes longer than one election cycle to complete.