A Resilient Will To Deliver Reliable Electricity To Nigerians

By Tony Erha

Under Tegbe, the Ministry appears to be dismantling the stumbling blocks that have for decades frustrated the delivery of reliable electricity to a resigned Nigerian populace. For many who had previously held the portfolio, the Power Ministry was a graveyard of reputations. The turf is seen as jinxed — littered with banana peels that sooner or later tripped its occupants. “Accept to serve and go down” was the unspoken premonition that greeted new appointees, some of whom indeed left the office as public villains.

“When President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, GCFR entrusted me with the responsibility of serving as Minister of Power, I made four promises to Nigerians. I promised a disciplined approach to solving the sector’s problems. I promised to pursue grid stability through structured, strategic reforms. I promised visible incremental improvements. And I promised honest communication with Nigerians. These commitments remain the standard by which I expect my stewardship to be judged.”

That declaration by Mr. Joseph Olasunkanmi Tegbe, Honorable Minister of Power, set the tone for what an Abuja Bureau Chief of one of Nigeria’s frontline newspapers described as “an evening of unusual testimonies to end the misfortunes of the country’s power sector.”

The occasion was Tegbe’s 100 days in office media parley, held at the Federal Ministry of Power headquarters in Abuja.

Under Tegbe, the Ministry appears to be dismantling the stumbling blocks that have for decades frustrated the delivery of reliable electricity to a resigned Nigerian populace.

For many who had previously held the portfolio, the Power Ministry was a graveyard of reputations. The turf is seen as jinxed — littered with banana peels that sooner or later tripped its occupants. “Accept to serve and go down” was the unspoken premonition that greeted new appointees, some of whom indeed left the office as public villains.

Years back, in the presidential era of Chief Olusegun Obasanjo, our own beloved Cicero, Chief Bola Ige of blessed memory, took on the portfolio and earned a “tinted cap” for agreeing to serve in a sector laid with landmines and infested with crocodiles. And as the saying goes, you don’t abuse crocodiles while you are still in the canoe.

Among our human rights circle, where Ige was a mentor, the candid advice shared in camaraderie was for our hero, Cicero the wise one, to watch his back while on the hot seat. It became conventional wisdom that anyone who had the temerity to accept appointment to that office must go with his babalawo, his Imam or his white-garment prayer warriors — sometimes all three.

Who says being appointed Minister of Power is a thing of joy and not a nightmare? To be Power Minister is akin to the Edo folklore of a night fight with spirits, popularized by the late Sir Victor Uwaifo’s epic, _Joromi_ — the man who went to wrestle with fierce spirits.

Some appointees went in and limped out. Others left with stained caps. And recently, another walked straight from there to jail.

Until three months ago when Tegbe assumed office, the story remained largely the same. Only a few managed to walk away unscathed.

But homilies teach that nightmares do not endure forever, and tough times have expiry dates. Nigeria’s tortuous electricity conundrum — that kaleidoscope of intrigue and backstabbing — must also have a terminal date. As an African proverb says, a lingering problem may take longer to solve, but it will eventually be solved.

And change now appears to be here. The innovation Nigerians are witnessing in a once inefficient power sector is enough to make many shout Eureka.

There are discerning and intuitive characters among journalists. There was an almost magnetic vibration among the sizeable crowd of senior journalists who thronged the Ministry in Abuja to hear the invigorating sermon on delivering Nigerians from the fetters of epileptic power supply. Could Tegbe be our own Joseph, like the biblical Joseph, came to free his kinsmen from the Egyptian certainty of self-imposed darkness?

Within just three months in the saddle, Tegbe has shown a firm grasp of the Ministry’s problems and the electricity value chain — a grasp that should endear him to the average Nigerian who toils daily under the weight of skeletal or non-existent power supply and its attendant economic and social deprivations.

Although he read largely from a prepared speech — apparently to avoid being misquoted as had happened recently — his presentation, punctuated with ad-libbed insights, left no doubt that he is a man who walks his talk.

“The hands that tied the fish with hooks to the kilns are the same that will take them off.” It was from within the journalism profession, to which I belong, that Tegbe’s recent comment was twisted and sensationalized into rehearsed, exaggerated headlines and television commentaries without the justification of voiceovers. Those who thought they got away with that gaffe have since been cautioned by even their senior colleagues never to repeat such an offence.

It is rare to see seasoned, pernickety journalists collectively acknowledge the milestone achievements of a sitting Power Minister, especially when the narrative is backed by empirical evidence that is verifiable.

Need I overemphasize the problems caused by absence or lack of electricity when every Nigerian already knows them? Need I belabour the details of the audacity to change the status quo and the leaps being recorded in what Nigerians still call NEPA, under Tegbe and his team?

As an Abuja Bureau Chief of a frontline newspaper declared to loud applause at the press conference: “The Nigerian electricity consumer is tired of empty promises and laxity from vested authorities that should provide constant electricity. All they desire is stable and affordable electricity. As they seem to be getting improvement from the Tegbe-led Ministry of Power, all must support him to step on toes, because the few who sabotage electricity supply are not bigger than the rest of Nigerians.”