By Henry Michael, Abuja
Former Vice President and presidential candidate of the African Democratic Congress (ADC), Atiku Abubakar, has claimed that the Federal Government’s latest approach to electricity sector reform reflects a policy direction he first proposed more than two decades ago.
Atiku said the recent acknowledgment by the Minister of Power that Nigeria can no longer rely solely on large, centralised power plants amounts to a delayed endorsement of the decentralised electricity generation model he had long advocated.
In a statement issued on Sunday by his Senior Special Assistant on Public Communication, Phrank Shaibu, the former vice president argued that the Tinubu administration had spent nearly three years pursuing ineffective policies that worsened the country’s electricity challenges before embracing what he described as a long-established solution.
“It should not take a government three years in office to discover what was obvious more than two decades ago,” Atiku said.
He criticised the administration for increasing electricity tariffs before addressing structural challenges in the power sector.
“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,” he stated.
Atiku recalled that while serving as Vice President under former President Olusegun Obasanjo, he consistently advocated decentralising electricity generation by exploiting Nigeria’s diverse energy resources, including hydroelectric power, natural gas and solar energy.
“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 overdependence on a single source,” he said.
He further alleged that billions of naira contributed by the federal, state and local governments were invested in the previous power reform efforts without delivering the expected results, claiming that substantial payments were made for contracts that were never fully executed.
The former vice president also recalled that the National Assembly later investigated the power sector reforms carried out during the Obasanjo administration, noting that he was not invited by the investigators because he had declined to chair the reform committee despite his appointment.
Atiku said he had consistently maintained his position on decentralised electricity generation, including during an interview with ARISE News in 2022 and throughout his presidential campaigns between 2007 and 2023.
“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 said.
Atiku pledged that an ADC administration under his leadership would pursue a diversified and decentralised electricity generation strategy anchored on hydro, gas, solar and other viable energy sources, while expanding transmission infrastructure, strengthening distribution networks and encouraging greater private sector participation.
“Nigeria does not suffer from a shortage of ideas. It suffers from a shortage of leaders willing to act on the right ideas at the right time. It is never too late to embrace the right policy, but Nigerians should never have had to pay the price for a government that spent three years learning what should have guided its actions from day one,” he added.
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