Former Vice President of Nigeria and Presidential Candidate of the African Democratic Congress, Atiku Abubakar, claims President Bola Tinubu has finally accepted his 21-year-old power sector vision to address Nigeria’s electricity supply difficulties.
Phrank Shaibu, Atiku’s spokeswoman, confirmed this in a statement on Sunday.
Atiku stated that the Tinubu administration has finally adopted a policy direction he first advocated for more than two decades ago.
According to him, the recent acknowledgement by Nigeria’s Minister of Power, Joseph Tegbe, that the country can no longer rely only on massive, centralised power facilities is a belated validation of the decentralised electricity generating strategy he advocated more than 20 years ago.
“It should not take a government three years in office to realise what was clear more than two decades before.
“A government that thinks before acting would have improved the system before asking citizens to pay more. Unfortunately, this administration has done the exact opposite—raising tariffs first and then considering the reforms needed to justify those hikes.”
Atiku stated that throughout his stint as Vice President of Nigeria, he continuously pressed President Olusegun Obasanjo to decentralise electricity generation by leveraging Nigeria’s numerous energy resources, such as hydroelectric dams, solar, gas, and other viable sources.
“This has been my position for over two decades,” he remarked.