Politics
PRESIDENT Bola Ahmed Tinubu has been urged to swiftly dismiss his non-performing power minister chief Adebayo Adelabu whose best stock-in-trade is to keep complaining and blaming everybody but himself for the annoyingly poor electricity power supply situation in the Country but hasn’t been able to proffer workable solutions to the electricity crisis.
HURIWA said: “Mr. President, you may need to accept the hard fact that you dont have a functional electricity power minister but you do have soneone you clothed with the authority of a cabinet level minister but whose penchant and passion is for electrifying the media and publc spaces with sweet empty talks/rhetoric and he is ever so ready to look for who to blame but not himself who ought to provide solutions.”
“The other day, your power minister declared that the number of Nigerians that lack access to electricity from the national grid has increased to about 92 million.
He disclosed this at the closing ceremony of the 7th Nigeria International Energy Summit in Abuja, as operators in the power sector called for partnerships in the deployment of solar power to bridge the country’s electricity gap.” How is it the duty of the minister of power to be bemoaning the acute electricity power supply status of the population when in actual fact, his job is to bring messages of hope, optimism and then follow up his soothing words with empirical solutions.”
HURIWA recalled that Nigeria generates and supplies between 3,000 and 4,000 megawatts of grid electricity to over 200 million citizens across the country, a development described as abysmally poor by experts and industry players.
HURIWA said however that the Minister of Power, Chief Adebayo Adelabu, whose duty ought to include bringing about solutions to fix our electricity power poverty but rather the minister is the nation’s chief mourner of poor electricity power when he said that though adequate access to energy by citizens had been a challenge globally, more than 40 per cent of people in Nigeria were currently affected.
The power minister also said: “Access to electricity is undeniably a fundamental requirement for socio-economic development and it is a pleasure to see so many dedicated individuals and experts gathered here in this hall to discuss strategies and solutions for bridging energy access gas.” HURIWA dismissed this posture of the power minister as provocative grandstanding.
HURIWA which accused the minister of power of engaging in meaningless public speeches whilst Nigeria suffers innumerable national grid collapses since he became minister, continued with his well known verbal warfare against his perceived adversaries in the electricity power sector when he threatened to revoke the licences of power Distribution Companies over persistent poor power supply across the country.
HURIWA recalled that the Minister of Power, Adebayo Adelabu, through his X handle, said the Chief Executives of Abuja Electricity Distribution Company, Ibadan Electricity Distribution Company, and the Managing Director of the Transmission Company of Nigeria have been summoned to a crucial meeting to explain the current challenges faced nationwide.
“The purpose of this meeting is to discuss the worsening power supply in their respective regions and to collectively find lasting solutions,” he said.
HURIWA further disclosed that the non- performing power minister who was recently allegedly seen wielding his power bank during the inauguration of the Geometric Power Plant in Aba, again for the umpteenth time lamented the insufficient electricity distribution by the Discos, despite the generation companies, saying “the ministry has been exerting pressure on the Generating Companies to enhance their performance, resulting in a recent increase in generation to over 4000MW. Despite this progress, certain distribution companies are failing to adequately distribute the power supplied by TCN, while vandalism of power infrastructure exacerbates the problem in regions such as Abuja, Benin, Port Harcourt, and Ibadan.”
HURIWA then appealed to President Tinubu thus: “Sir, your renewed hope agenda wouldn’t make meaning to millions of Nigerians who rely on power supply from the national grid to power their small and medium scale enterprises. Mr. President, many of these businesses are closing shops because of the high operational costs occasioned by your administration’s recent hike in the costs of petrol and diesel”.
“How does your administration want these fragile businesses to remain on track when Nigeria has witnessed in less than a year, more national grid collapses so much like what we saw in the 8-years of Muhammadu Buhari’s misadventures in governance. Mr. President, are you in a hurry to beat the negative records of the bad government of Muhammadu Buhari?”
HURIWA told the president thus: ” Mr. President, please give Nigeria an effective electricity power minister and drop this noise maker who hasnt added any value to the volumes of electricity power supplied to Nigerians. Nigerians are fed up with always reading meaningless public speeches by your power minister, but in reality, there is no electricity power in most parts of Nigeria.”
HURIWA lamented that Nigeria’s available power generation capacity fell by 981.8 megawatts between 2015 and August 2022 despite the over N1.51tn intervention in the sector as claimed without any credible evidence tendered publicly by the Federal administration of the immediate past President Muhammadu Buhari-led government. HURIWA is urging President Bola Ahmed Tinubu to investigate this alleged expenditures in the electricity power sector by his immediate predecessor because of lack of any evidence of what was achieved with such humongous amount of public funds dissipated by Buhari’s misadventures.
This came as the national grid collapsed 98 times under the regime of the former and indeed the worst historical President of Nigeria, retired Major General Muhammadu Buhari.
A document on Power Generation Trend (2013 – August 2022), obtained in Abuja from the Association of Power Generation Companies, the umbrella body of electricity producers, indicated that while available power generation capacity was 6,616.28MW in 2015, it dropped to 5,634.47MW as at August 2022.
It was also gathered that the total power generation capacity loss for the sector between 2015 and August 2022 rose to N1.76tn, as operators and experts decried the sorry state of the industry since it was unbundled in November 2013.
Although further analysis of the document showed that the available generation capacity fluctuated between 2015 and 2022, data from the report indicated that the quantum of available generation in Nigeria was not impressive.
It must be noted that the available generation capacity is different from the average utilised generation, as the latter is constantly lower than the former.
In fact, data from the document indicated that Nigeria’s average utilised generation during the review period hovered between 3,600MW and 4,118MW, which were, of course, lower than the least available generation capacity of 5,634.47MW recorded between January and August this year.
The available generation capacities in 2015, 2016, 2017 and 2018 were 6,616.28MW, 7,039.96MW, 6,871.26MW and 7,506.23MW respectively.
For 2019, 2020, 2021 and 2022 (January – August), the available power generation capacities of electricity producers across the country were 7,381.67MW, 7,792.51MW, 6,336.52MW and 5,634.47MW respectively. Since May of last year that Tinubu assumed office, Nigeria has had multiple cases of national power grid failures.
HURIWA has therefore suggested to the President that he needs to make hay whilst the sun shines by sacking the poorly performing power minister at the moment and enlist the service of an egg- head in the electricity power sector notwithstanding whether such a person is of the same ethnic stock with the president but the benchmark should be based on pure merits and competencies. The Rights group said the current administration got it twisted because the president was very particular about putting square pegs in round holes only because such persons are from his own side of the country.
12TH March, 2024.
C.E.
Tags: Adebayo Adelabu HURIWA President Bola Ahmed Tinubu
