Our Reporter, Abuja
Labour Party’s 2023 presidential candidate, Mr. Peter Obi, has reminded President Bola Ahmed Tinubu of his campaign promise to deliver uninterrupted electricity supply to Nigerians within his first four years in office, following yet another report of nationwide grid collapse on Wednesday.
Obi via his X handle recalled Tinubu’s December 22, 2022, campaign pledge that: “If I don’t give you constant electricity in the next four years, don’t vote for me for second term.”
He said the repeated blackouts Nigerians now endure, despite huge investments in the power sector, made it necessary to hold the President accountable.
“For a nation that already has more people living without electricity than anywhere else in the world, there could not have been a firmer or more comforting political promise than this,” Obi wrote.
The former Anambra governor lamented that under the current All Progressives Congress (APC) administration, Nigeria has recorded more frequent grid failures and outages than at any other time in its history.
He further noted that billions of dollars have been poured into the sector over the years with little or no improvement in supply. Nigeria, he said, spends more on power generation than countries like Vietnam, Egypt, Indonesia, and Bangladesh, yet lags behind in actual electricity output.
“While these nations have doubled their generation capacity, adding tens of thousands of megawatts that transformed their economies, Nigeria has barely crawled from 4,500MW to 5,000MW,” Obi stressed.
According to him, with a GDP of about $200 billion, Nigeria could unlock industrial growth and create millions of jobs if it invested properly in electricity. He argued that generating even a modest 10,000MW could raise the nation’s GDP by 50 percent.
“But instead of focusing on electricity, which would boost our economy, the government is prioritizing projects like coastal roads that contribute far less to growth, while factories shut down, jobs disappear, businesses collapse, and ordinary Nigerians live in darkness,” Obi added.
He urged President Tinubu to make power generation and distribution a top priority to support businesses, especially small and medium-sized enterprises, and revive the nation’s struggling economy.
Ikengaonline reports that the national grid collapsed yet again for the umpteenth time on Wednesday leaving the entire country without electricity supply.
