Adebayo Adelabu, minister of power, has blamed the rot in
the sector on the neglect of past administrations.
In a statement on Wednesday, Bolaji Tunji, special adviser
on strategic communications and media relations, said Adelabu made the comments
while hosting the World Bank delegation in his office in Abuja.
The minister blamed the previous governments for the
degeneration that the sector is passing through, noting that there has been
significant improvement since President Bola Tinubu took over.
According to Adelabu, the issue of the power sector is of
utmost concern to the president and he has given total support to all efforts
at making the sector work.
He acknowledged the support of development partners,
especially the World Bank, across various segments of the power sector —
including generation, transmission, distribution, and renewable energy.
The minister implored them to continue in that spirit to ensure
that the investment of the current administration succeeds.
“We’ve seen your support in transmission, we’ve seen your
support in distribution, we have seen your support in renewable energy, almost
in every facet, even in generation,” Adelabu said.
“One thing that this administration has brought to the table
is the seriousness, the determination, the commitment to make sure that the
power sector is transformed.
“There is very little you can achieve in your agriculture
sector, in your transportation
sector, in your defense, education,
health; without stable and efficient electricity supply. That is why the
President is really focusing on this, and he is supporting whatever we need to
do to make sure that we transform this sector. He is ready to give us that
support.”
He acknowledged that previous attempts to reform the power
sector yielded little or no results.
“We actually have a past that we are not proud of. Over the
years, we have only been paying lip service to transforming the power sector.
We have not worked the talk,” he said.
“Previous administrations have kept on doing the same thing
all the time and you cannot get different results for that, which is why we
have decided to do things differently this time. In all the segments across the
sector, we must run away from the past.”
‘NEGLECT OF POWER INFRASTRUCTURE OVER THE YEARS INCREASING
CHALLENGES’
The minister said the neglect of critical power
infrastructure over the years — including thousands of kilometres of
transmission lines and hundreds of thousands of transformers — has deepened the
challenges in the sector.
“How will you explain the kind of infrastructure that we put
together for our transmission network across the country? Thousands of
kilometers of power line, thousands of power transformers, hundreds of
thousands of distribution transformers that we have not maintained over time
and expect them to keep sustaining our energy supply. It is not possible,”
Adelabu said.
“How do we allow our people to be vandalising infrastructure
and expect stable electricity? So how do you have a sector with over 12 million
customers and our meter is not more than six million and we expect to have a
stable industry? No, it’s not possible. So what has happened with past
governments?
“In 1984, when the military was in power here, we achieved a
2000 megawatts. Between 1984 and 2023, it took us 40 years to add additional
2000 megawatts. Now we have an average of 5,800 megawatts generation within one
and a half years that we came to the office.
“What I’m saying is that, if the past administrations have
been adding things like this, we will not be where we are today. And that is
why I said that President Tinubu is actually laying the kind of foundation that
we need for our country to grow.”
He also criticised the Muhammadu Buhari administration for
stalling on the Siemens power deal signed in 2019.
“We entered into Siemens contract since 2019. We never
lifted a finger until 2023, when this government came on board. So you can now
imagine since this President came in and now look at the mileage we have
achieved,” he said.
The minister, however, noted that the pilot phase of the
Siemens power project is nearly complete in under two years, expressing
confidence in a brighter future for the power sector.
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