…as Minister calls for shared accountability, transparency and protection of power assets
Honourable Minister of Power, Mr Joseph Tegbe, has outlined his Ministerial Action Plan for the stabilisation and growth of Nigeria’s electricity sector, speaking at the second quarterly Nigerian Electricity Supply Industry (NESI) Stakeholders Meeting recently convened by the Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission (NERC) in Abuja. The forum, which was Chaired by the Chairman of NERC, Dr Musiliu Oseni, featured power sector stakeholders including operators, regulators and policy actors and had in attendance the Special Adviser to the President on Power, Mr Rilwan Lanre Babalola, and the Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of Power, Alh Mahmuda Mamman.
Delivering the keynote address, the Minister framed his plans around a core conviction that Nigeria’s electricity crisis demands collective ownership across the entire value chain. “Nigeria’s power crisis was not built by one hand, and it will not be fixed by one hand,” he said, calling on GenCos, DisCos, TCN, NISO, regulators, and government to accept shared responsibility for both the depth of the problem and the discipline of the solution.
On infrastructure, Tegbe called for power assets to be formally designated and treated as Critical National Assets, describing vandalism, grid sabotage, and energy theft as economic warfare against ordinary Nigerian households. He added that securing existing assets must run concurrently with optimising their output, with transmission weak points, spinning reserves, and priority substation relays all being actively addressed to improve near-term grid reliability.
Turning to metering and tariffs, the Minister argued that estimated billing had for too long penalised poor Nigerians while masking systemic losses. His ministry is working with stakeholders to accelerate metering rollout and reduce ATC&C losses, alongside developing a sustainable tariff transition pathway designed to protect the most vulnerable consumers from cost shocks while offering investors the long-term predictability that serious capital commitment demands.
On market governance, Tegbe stressed that tariff reform could only hold if payment compliance was enforced across the board. He called specifically for transparent Derived Remittance Obligation calculations, arguing that trust in the electricity market could not rest on opaque arithmetic. “Trust in the market begins with trust in the numbers,” he said. The Minister further announced that his ministry is working toward the publishing of KPIs and performance scorecards for GenCos and DisCos, making both excellence and underperformance visible to the Nigerian public.
Closing his address, the Minister anchored his personal commitment to three principles: transparency, with no hidden agendas; speed, through dismantling bureaucratic bottlenecks; and accountability, with consequences for those who undermine the sector. “Reform is not a promise deferred,” he said. “It is a discipline being executed, every day.”
