Electricity: Tinubu finally copied my power sector blueprint — Atiku

Former Vice President of Nigeria and Presidential Candidate of the African Democratic Congress, ADC, Atiku Abubakar, says President Bola Tinubu has finally adopted his 21-year-old power sector blueprint as a solution to Nigeria’s electricity supply challenges.

Atiku’s spokesperson, Phrank Shaibu, disclosed this in a statement on Sunday.

Atiku said the Tinubu administration has finally embraced a policy direction he first advocated more than two decades ago.

According to him, the recent admission by the Minister of Power, Joseph Tegbe, that Nigeria can no longer depend solely on large, centralised power plants amounts to a belated endorsement of the decentralised electricity generation model he championed more than 20 years ago.

“It should not take a government three years in office to discover what was obvious more than two decades ago.

“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.”

Atiku said that during his tenure as Vice President of Nigeria, he consistently urged President Olusegun Obasanjo to decentralise electricity generation by harnessing Nigeria’s diverse energy resources, including hydroelectric dams, solar, gas, and other viable sources.

“This has been my position for over two decades,” he stated.