Nigeria’s Minister of Power, Adebayo Adelabu has alleged that President Bola Tinubu’s predecessors neglected the power sector for so long.
Adelabu while hosting a delegation from the World Bank in his office said the previous administrations are responsible for the rot experienced within the power sector.
The minister also said that President Tinubu is committed to addressing the challenges faced by the sector by righting the wrongs of the past administrations.
“We actually have a past that we are not proud of. Over the years, we have only been paying lip service to transforming the power sector but have not worked the talk.
“Previous administrations have kept on doing the same thing all the time and you cannot get different results for that, which is why we have decided to do things differently this time. In all the segments across the sector, we must run away from the past,” Adelabu said.
In a statement issued by Bola Tunji, the minister’s spokesperson, there was prolonged neglect of critical power infrastructure for decades including thousands of transmission lines.
According to the minister, the power sector was progressing at a steady speed during the military regime but witnessed stagnation immediately the democratic administrations took over power.
“In 1984, when the military was in power here, we achieved 2000 megawatts. Between 1984 and 2023, it took us 40 years to add additional 2000 megawatts.
Now we have an average of 5,800 megawatts generation within one and a half years that we came to the office,” Adelabu said.
He said that had the last administration had been improving on the power generation, the sector would not have been as bad as it is currently.
