Presidential candidate of the African Democratic Congress, Atiku Abubakar, has said a recent shift in the Tinubu administration’s power sector policy reflects ideas he first advocated more than two decades ago, arguing the government spent nearly three years worsening Nigeria’s electricity crisis before arriving at the same conclusion.
In a statement from his aide Phrank Shaibu, Atiku said recent comments from the Minister of Power acknowledging that Nigeria can no longer rely solely on large centralized power plants amount to a belated endorsement of the decentralized electricity model he championed as vice president more than twenty years ago. He said the administration raised electricity tariffs before addressing the underlying structural problems in the sector, arguing that a more thoughtful government would have fixed the system first.
Atiku recalled that during his tenure as vice president, he urged President Olusegun Obasanjo to diversify electricity generation using hydroelectric, solar and gas resources, and said his disagreement with the government’s eventual gas centered strategy was strong enough that he declined to chair the Power Sector Reform Committee despite being appointed to lead it. He said billions of dollars were later committed to that gas focused approach without the expected results, and that a subsequent National Assembly investigation into the sector’s failures held Obasanjo accountable, though Atiku said he was never invited to testify since he had declined to chair the committee. He maintained that Nigeria’s electricity future depends on a diversified and decentralized generation mix rather than dependence on any single energy source.
