By 29 May 2025, the government of President Bola Tinubu will be two years in office. At almost two years office, whenever an opportunity present itself to the Minister of Power Adebayo Adelabu to point out his achievements, he always points fingers at the previous government. Nigerians expect him to point out his concrete achievements in the power sector. What difference is he making? What are his initiatives? What new and innovative ways has he introduced to face the challenges facing the power sector? In the absence of any achievement, it appears, the only achievement of Mr. Adelabu is blaming former President Muhammadu Buhari’s government for Nigeria’s power problems. The minister’s game does not stop at shifting the blames and doing nothing. He goes far, again and again.
Facts are verifiable, evidence based and tangible. As the saying goes, facts are sacred. Therefore, when Nigeria’s Minister of Power Adebayo Adelabu was quoted widely by the media this week, claiming that: “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,” it was expected that he was stating the facts, not mere and popular political ritual of putting the blame on the past. Adebayo Adelabu was also quoted by the media, and widely again, claiming that “We entered into the Siemens contract in 2019. We never lifted a finger until 2023, when this government came on board.” Some newspapers aptly summed up Adelabu’s bizarre claims with a concise headline that says: “$2.3bn Siemens power project was idle until Tinubu came on board.” This is not the first time the minister has engaged in this blatant revisionism, aimed solely at pointing a finger at the past to shield himself from accountability.
Exactly over a year ago, precisely on 5th April 2024 the minister, at a media briefing repeated these unsubstantiated claims that desperately seek to entirely blame the immediate past government of former President Muhammadu Buhari for all the woes of the power sector. Many keen observers and players in the power sector responded to the minister’s claims by pointing out the facts about the Siemens project and the point at which the project was in terms implementation when a new government took over on 29 May 2023. The obsession of Adebayo Adelabu with twisting the facts or blaming the government of former President Muhammadu Buhari over the Siemens project is disturbing because all the details about implementation of the protect: the approvals, the financial releases, the procurements, the installations of mega transformers and the arrival of mobile power substations were widely publicized and shared across media and social media platforms. In an apparent desperation to shift blame and again avoid responsibility Adebayo Adelabu engages in the abstract. This is why pointing out the fallacies of his fondness for revisionism matters for posterity.
First, the Siemens project is entirely an initiative of former President Muhammad Buhari. It aims to resolve with finality Nigeria’s consistent power problems, to empower Nigerians and improve the economy and lives of the people. Of course, Covid-19 and the war in Ukraine affected timelines but former President Muhammadu Buhari kept the project going with total commitment of resources and implementation.
In March 2022, former minister of power Engr. Abubakar D. Aliyu lead a government delegation to Berlin and Frankfurt Germany where a meeting with the leadership of Siemens Energy fast tracked the deliveries of the first phase of the project. While delivering the President Muhammadu Buhari’ administration’s scorecard in January 2023, former minister of power’s presentation included videos and images of the mega transformers and mobile power sub-stations delivered to Nigeria.
At as at January 2023, 6 of the 10 Mega Power Transformers have already arrived the shores of Nigeria and installation of the ones delivered was ongoing in various locations — while the remaining 4 were onshore. At that time the first transformer was being installed in Ajah Lagos while the second one was also being installed at Apo Abuja. Infact, the mega transformer installed in Apo was energized on 15 May 2023. It was at the same time that mobile substations were delivered and cleared up from the ports in Lagos. As of 1 May 2023, FGN Power Company received delivery of 80% of the equipment for the pilot projects, which were deployed to critical sites across the country to improve power transmission capacity.
All this progress on the Siemens project was only possible because of the commitment of President Muhammadu Buhari and the former minister of power’s dedication to making sure that the project was successful. Funding for the project has all the backing of the then federal government. Infact, in December 2021, the former Minister of Finance, Zainab Ahmed, and former minister of power Engr. Abubakar D. Aliyu secured the approval of the Federal Executive Council of €63m for the procurements under the Presidential Power Initiative (PPI). One of the last official engagements of the former government, in the power sector, was testing and technical commissioning of the 700 megawatts Zungeru Hydroelectric Power station, which is the biggest power project delivered in recent times. The load testing of Zungeru HPP was carried out on 25 May 2023. The consultant to the project, Dr Asiwaju Johnson Adewunmi reported that the On-Grid load testing of the Zungeru Power Plant was successfully carried out at 7 am on 25 May 2023 to 26 May 2023. The Zungeru Plant is still contributing and stabilising the national grid with 700MW, which Adelabu is now enjoying and at the same time claiming the Buhari Government didn’t do anything in the power sector.
Government is continuous process; one government picks up from where the term of another government stops. Nigeria’s power sector is a serious matter and should not be subjected to these rounds of misinformation and outright baseless political claims. People yearn for stable electricity. Nigerians want the lights to be on with stability. This is the assignment given to Adebayo Adelabu. Blaming the previous government is not the job of a minister.
Mr Oluwole works with Power and Energy Studies Centre, Northwestern University Qatar, Education City, Ar-Rayyan, Doha
