Nigerian workers fault Tinubu’s Minister over claim that 150m Nigerians have adequate electricity

The Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) has described as “a joke too far” the claim by the Minister of Power, Adebayo Adelabu, that 150 million Nigerians now enjoy “adequate electricity” supply of 5,500 megawatts.

In a statement released by the union’s President, Joe Ajaero, on Wednesday, the union said the minister’s statement was “outrageous”.

The union leader noted that the “wild assertion is not only pretentious, but also a bad joke on a people daily confronted by grinding darkness, outrageous electricity tariffs, and a power sector manipulated for private profit at the expense of national progress”.

He said the minister, “perhaps,” “wants to perform Jesus’ miracle of feeding 5,000 persons with five loaves of bread and two fish”.

According to Ajaero, the minister’s claim was nothing but an attempt to insult the intelligence of Nigerians, given the power challenge the nation faces.

Adelabu, during the 2025 Ministerial Sectoral Update Conference held in Abuja last Thursday, had said, “As it is today, Nigeria—a country with about 240 million people—has access for 150 million people already, while about 80 million lack access to adequate electricity in Nigeria.”

But the NLC president said, “To suggest that over 150 million Nigerians have access to reliable power in a country that struggles to generate a meagre and inconsistent 5,000 megawatts—far below the global benchmark of 1,000mw per one million people—is to insult the intelligence and lived realities of Nigerians.”

While noting that Nigeria should be generating no less than 150,000mw to justify such a claim, he said that “even on its best day, the country’s electricity generation has never exceeded 5,500mw—and that figure remains unstable and unreliable”.

Ajaero asked, “We want to ask: is Nigeria’s standard different from the world standard? Where are the power plants that make this level of supply possible?

“Where is the upgraded transmission infrastructure to support such output? Why are our homes still shrouded in darkness and our factories shutting down daily?”

Millions Of Nigerians Living Without Electricity
The NLC president further stated that millions of Nigerians, from urban slums to rural communities, continue to live without access to electricity, while the few who have access do so under “constant threat of disconnection, blackouts, and financial exploitation through a complex pyramid of inflated tariffs and arbitrary billing”.

He traced the current electricity crisis in Nigeria to what he also described as a direct result of the grand betrayal that was the 2013 power sector’s privatisation.

Ajaero accused the federal government of handing over the nation’s critical infrastructure to cronies for just N400 billion.

“Over a decade later, there has been no improvement in service delivery. Yet, these same GenCos and DisCos, which have failed the nation woefully, are to receive over N4 trillion in public subsidies with zero accountability.

“It is disheartening that after over 12 years of privatisation, the power sector has not experienced any significant capacity expansion. No substantial infrastructure renewal despite trillions spent.

“Unfortunately, and predictably too, there has been no sanction for incompetent DisCos and GenCos as outlined in the privatisation agreement because the buyers seem to be the same as the sellers,” he explained.

On the state of the Transmission Company of Nigeria, Ajaero said that rather than fix the rot in the power sector, the “government now plans to sell off the Transmission Company of Nigeria (TCN)—the last publicly owned component of the power value chain.”

This, he said, was not reform but an “economic ruse dressed in bureaucratic doublespeak”.

“It is an attempt to swallow the remaining power asset by the ruling elite at the detriment of the suffering Nigerian masses. We are worried that the already hijacked entities in the name of privatisation have grossly underperformed, and you want to go the same route with the remaining one – the outcome, of course, will not be different,” he added.

The NLC, while also criticising the government over the recent electricity tariff hike, noted that the action masked under the so-called “Band A, B, and C” classification was nothing but a sophisticated scheme to legalise exploitation.

‘Power Supply Remains Epileptic’
The union’s president, in the statement, said, “While DisCos have raked in over N700 billion from helpless consumers, power supply remains epileptic, erratic, and inaccessible to the majority. Millions of Nigerians are now forced to choose between food and electricity bills.

“Nigerians are tired of propaganda and statistical gymnastics. Cease from insulting the intelligence of the people with fabrications and false hope. Nigerians deserve more respect. If you generate, transmit and distribute more power, we will see it in our homes and factories, not on the pages of newspapers and on television.”

The union vowed that it would not fold its arms while Nigerians are exploited by economic fat cats.

“We are prepared to deploy all democratic and lawful means to continue to expose and resist all grand deception targeted at the Nigerian masses. We will continue in our quest to restore equity and reclaim the power sector for the Nigerian people.”