Nigeria’s inability to fully harness and realise its economic potential which will drive development and growth and in turn bring prosperity to its largely impoverished and immiserated citizens is tethered to its power crisis. Nigeria needs to industrialise and it has to do it fast but it cannot do that in the current state of its electricity sector.
On Tuesday, Minister of Power, Joseph Tegbe, promised to put an end to the epileptic electricity in the country and address the myriad of problems hindering power stability and energy security in the country within three months. He spoke while addressing members of Nigeria’s upper legislative chamber, the Senate. Tegbe’s ascension to the position came after his predecessor, Adebayo Adelabu, resigned to pursue his ambition of becoming Oyo State governor.
Nothing is astounding and optimism-inducing about the remarks of Tegbe and the promise he made. Similar utterances and posturing by his predecessors have somewhat become the hallmark of every occupant of that office in the last decade. In fact, the ministry has become the graveyard of unfulfilled promises and unrealised potential as every minister who has manned the ministry, particularly since the coming to power of the All Progressives Congress, made grand pledges, lofty assertions and tantalising gestures of resolving the problems that plague the nation’s power sector.
In 2014, former Lagos State governor, Raji Fashola, who was riding on the crest of his sterling and excellent performance as a governor and the growing public resentment towards the then Goodluck Jonathan-led federal government, had excoriated the government over its inability to address the nation’s power challenges. He noted that solving the nation’s abysmal power was not rocket science and fixing the problem permanently could be done in six months. Fashola’s case is not a one-off. The jury is out about Adelabu whose performance as power minister is as woeful as it is calamitous.
Subsequently, he was appointed the minister of power in 2015 after the All Progressives Congress (APC), giving him the golden chance to fix the power challenge he spoke fervently about having a solution to. Needless to say, his time as the helmsman of the power ministry was poor, uninspiring and left so much to be desired. He could not fix in four years the problem he vowed would be solved in six months.
So, when Tegbe spoke with energy and passion on the floor of the Senate, many felt a sense of déjà vu. Whether Tegbe’s promise and assertions were a product of his conviction, strong desire and political will to get things done and find the elusive solutions to the power problem or his just pandering and playing to the gallery, it is hard to tell but what we must gauge and determine is if Tegbe’s promise to fix the problem in three months is realistic.
“I’ll come and present to you what our plan is, with clear milestones. If you don’t see this in three months, it means you won’t see it in six months. So you must see it in three months, and you must hold us accountable for it,” He told lawmakers on Wednesday. The minister said his team would, within the next one or two weeks, unveil a detailed blueprint and roadmaps for reforms aimed at ending leakages, addressing liquidity constraints and stabilising the national grid.
For many, the story of Nigeria’s inability to have stable electricity after 66 years of independence is a profoundly sad one. Nigeria’s electricity sector has for decades been beset by severe instability, with incessant national grid collapses plunging millions of homes and businesses into darkness. The country recorded several grid dysfunctions and collapses in recent years, further deepening concerns over poor transmission infrastructure, shoddy maintenance, inadequate generation capacity and liquidity problems across the value chain.
Industry operators have repeatedly attributed the crisis to old equipment, a dearth of investment and mounting debts owed to generation companies (GenCos). Despite having an installed generation capacity of over 13,000 megawatts, Nigeria struggles to transmit and distribute stable electricity, with average daily supply often hovering far below national demand.
Of course, Minister Tegbe is fully aware of the enormous challenges the ministry is grappling with but his promise to find a lasting solution solution to the conundrum may ring hollow and empty in the ears of many Nigerians who have heard such compelling but perfunctory pledges before from those who were fortunate enough to occupy Tegbe’s position.
Nigeria’s inability to fully harness and realise its economic potential which will drive development and growth and in turn bring prosperity to its largely impoverished and immiserated citizens is tethered to its power crisis. Nigeria needs to industrialise and it has to do it fast but it cannot do that in the current state of its electricity sector. Tegbe has the chance to change that. He has said the right thing, it is now time for him to back it up with real and decisive action that strikes at the core of Nigeria’s electricity woes.
He will either have his name written in glowing and moving eulogy in history books and etched permanently in our national consciousness as the man who got the job done or will just, like those before him in recent times, be seen and regarded as nothing more than a charlatan who had the fortune to occupy and change an institution crucial to the nation’s sovereignty but could not turn it around. Like a snake that slithers across the rock surface with no known or visible impact, he will be forgotten and consigned to the dustbin of history.
