In the Nigerian electric-power industry, maintenance costs over 70% of the total production expenditure. Unplanned downtime has resulted in lost electricity-generation and requires resources to be diverted to get the system running again, i.e., lower profitability occurred. Therefore, the electric-power stations are facing major challenges to shorten downtimes and reduce maintenance costs per MWh of output. In order to improve the maintenance schemes that are implemented, self-assessment of the existing maintenance processes and schedules has to be conducted. Organizations sometimes overlook (i) the need to establish structured ways of prioritizing actions for improvement, (ii) facilitating the sharing of experience, (iii) collecting feedback, (iv) developing good practices and (v) comparing performances against those achieved using a business-excellence model. Hence a maintenance audit of the Afam power-station has been conducted and the station's performance compared with existing international best standards. Weaknesses became apparent in the existing maintenance systems and remedial strategies are suggested. (c) 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.