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From Ndubuisi Orji, Abuja
Former Vice President, Atiku Abubakar, has said that the Federal Government’s admission that the country could no longer depend solely on large centralised power plants was a belated endorsement of decentralised electricity generation model, which he championed over 20 years ago.
Atiku, in a statement by his Senior Special Assistant on Public Communication, Phrank Shaibu, stated that President Bola Tinubu administration finally arrived at the policy direction after nearly three years of allegedly worsening the country’s electricity crisis through poor planning and misplaced priorities.
The new Minister of Power, Joseph Tegbe, had, last week, stated that the country could no longer rely on centralised power generation and distributed generation through mini-grid.
Nonetheless, Atiku, who is also the African Democratic Congress (ADC) 2027 presidential candidate, expressed concern that it took the government three years to discover what became obvious more than two decades ago.
According to him, the President Tinubu administration, rather than pursuing bold structural reforms from the outset, chose to increase electricity tariffs, while leaving Nigerians in deeper darkness.
He stated that “a government that thinks before it acts would have fixed the system before asking citizens to pay more. Unfortunately, this administration has done the exact opposite, raising tariffs first and only now beginning to think about the reforms required to justify those increases.”
The ADC candidate recalled that during his tenure as Vice President, he consistently urged President Olusegun Obasanjo to decentralise electricity generation by harnessing Nigeria’s diverse energy resources, including hydroelectric dams, solar, gas and other viable sources.
According to him, his conviction was so strong that when President Obasanjo established the Power Sector Reform Committee, founded principally on a gas-driven generation strategy, he declined to preside over it despite being appointed its Chairman.
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He said: “This has been my position for over two decades. When President Obasanjo established the Power Sector Reform Committee based primarily on gas-fired generation, I was appointed Chairman. However, because I fundamentally disagreed with the policy direction, I declined to preside over the committee. I believed then, as I do now, that Nigeria’s electricity future lay in a diversified and decentralised energy mix, not an over-dependence on a single source.
“Unfortunately, billions of dollars contributed by the Federal Government, states and local governments were committed to that approach, yet the expected results never materialised. Contracts were awarded, huge sums were paid upfront, but much of the promised work was never done.
“The National Assembly subsequently investigated the power sector reforms and held President Obasanjo accountable for the outcome. I was never invited by the investigators because I had declined to chair the committee despite being formally appointed. My position has remained consistent: Nigeria must diversify its sources of electricity generation if we are to achieve stable, affordable and sustainable power.
“For more than two decades, I have consistently argued that Nigeria’s over-dependence on a centralised generation system was economically unsustainable and technically inefficient. Today, the Tinubu administration is merely acknowledging what I proposed years ago,” he said.
The former Vice President argued that affordable and reliable electricity remained the foundation of industrialisation, job creation, economic growth and national competitiveness, saying, “it is regrettable that rather than implementing coherent reforms, this government has spent nearly three years experimenting with the livelihoods of Nigerians.
“The result has been higher electricity tariffs, struggling businesses, collapsing manufacturers and households paying more for less power.
“The greatest tragedy is not that this government has finally embraced the right idea. The tragedy is that it took three years of policy drift, higher tariffs and prolonged darkness to discover what could have transformed Nigeria’s power sector more than two decades ago.”
He assured that an ADC-led Federal Government under his leadership would pursue a diversified and decentralised electricity generation strategy driven by hydro, gas, solar and other viable energy sources, while expanding transmission infrastructure, strengthening distribution networks and encouraging private sector participation to guarantee stable and affordable electricity across the country.
