Dare Babalola
A former presidential candidate of the Labour Party, Peter Obi, has berated President Bola Tinubu and the All Progressives Congress (APC) over the state of electricity in the country.
In a post made on X, the former Anambra governor recalled that Tinubu, during his campaign period, urged Nigerians not to re-elect him if he didn’t give constant electricity in four years time.
Obi, however, slammed the present administration over multiple grid collapse in the last two years.
He wrote, “The impact is too glaring for Nigerians to forget the promise of Mr. President while campaigning on 22nd December 2022 that: ‘If I Don’t Give You Constant Electricity in The Next 4 Years, Don’t Vote For Me For Second Term’.
“For a nation already stated to have more people living without electricity than anywhere in the world, there could not be any more firm comforting political promise than this.
“Yet APC and its current government have presided over more national grid failures and power outages than any government in our history. There are now repeated blackouts despite billions in power investments.”
The former presidential hopeful also claimed that the impact of billions of dollars which has been spent on Nigeria’s power sector over the years has not been felt by the populace.
“Over the years, billions of dollars have been spent on the power sector in Nigeria. In fact, Nigeria has spent more on power generation with little or no increase in supply, than countries like Vietnam, Egypt, Indonesia, and Bangladesh. Yet, while some of these nations have proudly doubled their electricity generation, and distribution by adding tens of thousands of megawatts to transform their economies and increase their GDP, Nigeria has barely crawled from 4,500MW to 5,000MW.
“With a GDP of about $200 billion, Nigeria has the capacity to significantly boost its economy if it invests properly in electricity. Generating even a bare minimum of 10,000MW could raise our GDP by about 50%, which will unlock industrial growth, and create millions of jobs. But rather than focusing on this, which will improve our economy, we are focused on coastal roads that will contribute far less to our economic growth, while factories shut down, jobs disappear, businesses collapse, and ordinary Nigerians live in darkness,” Obi said.
He called on the president to prioritise generating and distributing more electricity to power businesses, especially NSME, “which will create jobs and grow the economy”.
