According to Atiku Abubakar, a former vice president and presidential candidate of the African Democratic Congress (ADC), President Bola Tinubu has finally implemented his power sector design, which he had proposed twenty-one years ago, to address the problems with Nigeria’s power supply.
Phrank Shaibu, a spokesman for Atiku, made the announcement in a statement released on Sunday.
More than twenty years after he first campaigned for it, Atiku claims the Tinubu government has now adopted a policy course of action.
He sees Joseph Tegbe’s recent recognition that Nigeria cannot rely only on big, centralised power plants as a tardy validation of the decentralised model of electricity generation that he advocated for over 20 years ago.
“A government shouldn’t have to spend three years in power to figure out something that was crystal clear over twenty years ago.
Fixing the system before asking residents to pay more would have been the move of a government that thinks before it acts. Regrettably, the current administration has taken the inverse approach, prioritising tariff hikes before considering the necessary changes to back them up.
Atiku stated that he often asked President Olusegun Obasanjo to decentralise power generation during his time as Vice President of Nigeria. He claimed that the country has a variety of energy resources, such as hydroelectric dams, solar power, gas, and more.
“I have held this position for more than twenty years,” he declared.