Nigerians Need Electricity Not Another Performance of Promises – An Open Letter To Minister Tegbe, By Lanre Ogundipe

Dear Chief Joseph Olasunkanmi Tegbe,

Your appointment as Minister of Power has generated expectations, partly due to your skilled background in institutional transformation, monetary administration and governance. Nigerians would naturally hope that these experiences will carry a special strategy to a sector that has annoyed successive administrations and imposed huge financial and social prices on the nation.

But allow me to start with a warning. You are getting into an workplace whose occupants have repeatedly confronted the identical issues, introduced comparable interventions and promised gradual enchancment. The vocabulary of reform has modified through the years; the expertise of electrical energy shoppers has not modified sufficiently.

Nigeria has heard this earlier than.

From Professor Chinedu Nebo, via Babatunde Fashola and Abubakar Aliyu, to Adebayo Adelabu, successive Ministers of Power have spoken of accelerating era, stabilising the nationwide grid, enhancing fuel provide, increasing transmission capability and delivering extra dependable electrical energy. Their particular person statements and circumstances differed, however the recurring sample is troublesome to disregard. Each administration inherited a troubled sector, recognized its weaknesses and introduced measures meant to enhance efficiency. Yet the nation stays trapped in an electrical energy disaster that has outlived successive ministers.

Nebo’s administration operated throughout the transition to privatisation and spoke of attaining 10,000 megawatts by the tip of 2014. Fashola promoted incremental energy and a development in the direction of extra dependable provide. Aliyu confronted recurring grid instability, whereas Adelabu acknowledged that uninterrupted electrical energy couldn’t be achieved via unrealistic guarantees or short-term declarations.

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These historic references will not be meant to dismiss no matter enhancements particular person administrations might have recorded. They are reminders that figuring out the issues and saying treatments have by no means been enough. The query is why the interventions have failed to supply a sturdy transformation.

The 2013 privatisation of the era and distribution corporations was anticipated to introduce funding, industrial self-discipline and improved effectivity. It transferred vital property to personal operators, however didn’t resolve the underlying weaknesses of the electrical energy market. Inadequate transmission infrastructure, fuel provide constraints, poor metering, industrial losses, collected money owed and weak enforcement of contractual obligations continued to undermine efficiency.

The lesson is simple: altering possession doesn’t mechanically restore a faulty system.

Your personal public statements recommend that you simply recognise the complexity of the duty. During your Senate screening, you cautioned in opposition to guarantees of quick uninterrupted electrical energy and acknowledged that the sector required structural intervention. That was a sensible place. But Nigerians have heard comparable assurances about incremental enchancment. What issues now could be whether or not your administration can transfer past analysis and show a measurable distinction.

Your comment on the commissioning of a photo voltaic hybrid energy venture at Yakubu Gowon University on 16 September 2026 deserves explicit consideration. You reportedly instructed Nigerians that some areas which had endured as a lot as three months with out electrical energy had been now receiving as much as 18 hours of provide. You added that some shoppers had requested you to decelerate as a result of their freezers had been freezing repeatedly.

If these communities genuinely skilled such enchancment, it was welcome. But a minister liable for nationwide electrical energy provide should distinguish between native progress and nationwide efficiency. Which communities loved the reported 18 hours? Which distribution corporations and feeders had been concerned? How lengthy was the development sustained? Was it mirrored in independently verifiable operational data?

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A freezer working repeatedly in a single neighbourhood is welcome information. It just isn’t proof that Nigeria’s electrical energy disaster has been resolved. The public wants greater than an amusing anecdote to ascertain the efficiency of a nationwide electrical energy system.

Developments in November make the necessity for such proof much more urgent. On 5 November, the Ministry acknowledged decreased electrical energy provide affecting Lagos, Abuja, Ogun, Kwara and Oyo. The Nigerian Independent System Operator attributed the era shortfall to insufficient fuel provide to thermal crops and decreased hydroelectric output. National era was reported at roughly 3,659 megawatts that afternoon.

On 7 November, you assured Nigerians that electrical energy provide would start to enhance inside 48 to 72 hours. You attributed the disruption to deliberate upkeep at Egbin Power Station, fuel provide constraints affecting some thermal crops and harm to vital transmission traces. Two days later, you reported that energy had been restored to lots of the affected areas in Lagos, Ogun, Oyo, Kwara and the Federal Capital Territory. You additionally introduced that the vandalised Benin-Egbin 330kV transmission line had been repaired and returned to service. However, you acknowledged that your groups had been nonetheless working to revive full provide to the remaining affected places.

That qualification issues. Restoration in a number of communities is welcome, nevertheless it shouldn’t be confused with the entire decision of the broader provide drawback. On 8 November, the day earlier than your restoration announcement, era was nonetheless reported at roughly 2,945.62 megawatts, with 12 producing crops recording zero output, in accordance with figures attributed to the NISO portal. The public due to this fact must know whether or not the producing models affected by the disruption returned to service as anticipated, whether or not electrical energy allocations to the affected distribution corporations recovered, and whether or not shoppers skilled a sustained enchancment after the repairs.

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What precisely had been restored, the place had regular provide resumed, and what remained excellent? These will not be hostile questions. They are the minimal necessities of public accountability. If the Ministry stories restoration, it must also publish the operational proof exhibiting the extent of that restoration and whether or not the development has been sustained.

The underlying issues are well-known. The electrical energy market stays financially distressed. Generating corporations wrestle with fee arrears; fuel suppliers face industrial and fee dangers; distribution corporations deal with income assortment issues and community losses. Government interventions might settle some excellent obligations, however until the circumstances producing these money owed are corrected, the liabilities will accumulate once more.

Your administration should due to this fact set up a clear account of the sector’s monetary place. Nigerians ought to know the verified liabilities, the quantities truly settled, the excellent obligations and the safeguards in opposition to a recent cycle of debt. A debt settlement that leaves the causes of the debt untouched is just short-term reduction.

The gas-to-power drawback additionally requires a coordinated response past the boundaries of your Ministry. Nigeria possesses substantial fuel sources, but energy stations continuously lack enough provides. This just isn’t merely a query of useful resource availability. It entails fee arrears, home fuel pricing, transportation infrastructure, pipeline6 safety and the industrial confidence of suppliers. The related ministries, regulators, fuel producers and producing corporations should set up preparations that make provide reliable and fee credible.

The similar sensible strategy is critical in transmission and distribution. Additional era capability has restricted worth if the nationwide community can not evacuate the electrical energy or distribution corporations can not ship it reliably. Installed capability, obtainable era, precise era and electrical energy obtained by shoppers are totally different measurements. They ought to by no means be offered as interchangeable proof of progress.

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Metering additionally stays a significant shopper concern. Years of programmes and public expenditure haven’t eradicated estimated billing. The Ministry ought to work with NERC and the distribution corporations to ascertain what number of meters have truly been put in and activated, what the programmes have value and what stays to be performed. Consumers mustn’t proceed paying arbitrary estimates for electrical energy they might not have obtained.

The Electricity Act 2023 has additionally created alternatives for states to develop their very own electrical energy markets. This needs to be handled as a chance to increase funding and enhance native provide, not as a motive to desert the nationwide grid. Your Ministry has a accountability to coordinate federal and state initiatives, help credible funding frameworks and make sure that decentralisation doesn’t produce regulatory confusion.

Chief Tegbe, your skilled expertise might enable you perceive these challenges, however the electrical energy sector just isn’t a consulting project. It is a politically uncovered, financially distressed and technically demanding business involving highly effective private and non-private pursuits. Reform would require greater than coverage bulletins. It would require clear data, contractual self-discipline, efficient regulation and the willingness to confront institutional failures.

I’d due to this fact urge you to publish a concise public efficiency framework overlaying era, fuel provide, transmission, distribution, metering and sector funds. It ought to set up measurable targets, determine accountable establishments, present implementation timelines and report precise outcomes at common intervals. The figures needs to be independently verifiable and will distinguish between tasks introduced, funds dedicated, expenditure incurred and enhancements delivered to shoppers.

There must also be a transparent mechanism for investigating persistent operator failures and implementing current obligations. Where wrongdoing is established, accountability ought to comply with. Where the issue is flawed coverage or institutional weak spot, the treatment should tackle its trigger somewhat than merely announce one other intervention.

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Above all, resist the temptation to measure progress by beneficial anecdotes or short-term enhancements. Nigerians don’t anticipate you to supply uninterrupted electrical energy in a single day. They anticipate honesty in regards to the difficulties and proof that your interventions are altering the state of affairs. If a goal can not moderately be achieved inside a specific interval, clarify why and publish the phases required to realize it. Public confidence is extra more likely to develop from credible commitments than from optimistic declarations that can not be sustained.

You have inherited a troublesome project, however not an unfamiliar one. Your predecessors encountered lots of the similar constraints. The nation doesn’t want one other minister to rediscover them. It wants somebody ready to confront why earlier interventions failed and set up a system through which enhancements can endure past the tenure of any particular person workplace holder.

Mr Minister, Nigerians will not be asking you to decelerate as a result of their freezers are freezing. They are asking why, after many years of reforms, public expenditure and ministerial assurances, hundreds of thousands of households and companies nonetheless can not rely on electrical energy.

Do not search public applause for saying enchancment. Let the proof converse. Do not mistake a short lived restoration for an enduring answer. And don’t permit your administration to grow to be one other chapter within the lengthy historical past of guarantees that the Nigerian electrical energy sector has didn’t fulfil.

The nation has heard sufficient assurances. What it wants now could be dependable electrical energy, clear efficiency and accountability for outcomes.

Ogundipe, Public Affairs Analyst, former President Nigeria and Africa Union of Journalists writes from Abuja.

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