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| Minister of Power — Joseph Tegbe |
In the humid political heartland of Ibadan, Nigeria’s Minister of Power, Joseph Olasunkanmi Tegbe, has turned a series of strategic stakeholder meetings into the opening salvo of a broader campaign blending policy delivery with partisan mobilisation.
On Sunday, the Ibadan-born engineer and reform strategist convened separate engagements with All Progressives Congress (APC) leaders, executives, and community stakeholders from Ibadan South-East and Ibadan North Local Government Areas. The message was dual-track: the Tinubu administration’s power sector interventions are beginning to deliver measurable, if still modest, results—and those results should form the foundation for continuity in 2027.
“We will spare no effort to ensure that President Bola Tinubu gets re-elected in 2027, and we are not going to stop at that, as all the candidates of our great party will get our full backing,” Tegbe declared. He urged party faithful to close ranks, take mobilisation to every ward and polling unit, and present the administration’s record—particularly on electricity—as a concrete argument for re-election.
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The timing is deliberate. Tegbe, sworn in as Minister of Power in June 2026 after the resignation of Adebayo Adelabu (who pursued the Oyo governorship), has spent his first roughly 100 days diagnosing systemic failures and stabilising the electricity value chain. A first-class civil engineering graduate of Obafemi Awolowo University with advanced degrees in business and public administration, and a former senior partner at KPMG Africa, Tegbe arrived with a reputation as a fiscal and institutional reform specialist. His early tenure has emphasised three pillars: stabilising generation and transmission, restoring market discipline through debt resolution and metering, and expanding access via both grid upgrades and decentralised solar solutions.
Nationally, the numbers Tegbe and the ministry have cited are carefully framed as “modest achievements.” Generation and transmission have exceeded 5,000 MW in recent weeks, peaking at 5,330 MW in August and September 2026—above the previous typical range of 3,700–4,700 MW. New transformers at key Lagos substations (Apapa, Ijora, Alausa, Lekki) unlocked hundreds of megawatts of transmission capacity; the Alaoji plant was restored after years offline. Roughly 350,000 meters were installed in the first 100 days, contributing to a cumulative total exceeding one million by August 2026. Off-grid efforts have delivered dozens of solar and mini-grid installations across multiple states, connecting tens of thousands of people. Critically, the government has ruled out immediate tariff increases and advanced a multi-trillion-naira debt settlement programme for generation companies to restore liquidity.
Yet Tegbe has repeatedly cautioned that aggregate megawatt figures do not automatically translate into reliable supply for every community. Nigeria’s installed capacity remains far higher than what reaches consumers due to gas constraints, ageing infrastructure, vandalism, commercial losses, and distribution bottlenecks. Recent steps—including a new ministerial committee on infrastructure protection and plans for energy zones promising more consistent supply in key corridors—acknowledge these persistent gaps.
In Oyo State specifically, Tegbe has grounded the national narrative in local delivery. He highlighted plans for solar mini-grids across various locations and said electrification projects in Ogbomoso, Oke-Ogun, and Ibarapa are nearing completion. These interventions, he argued, would permanently address years of epileptic supply and end “chronic darkness” in those regions. Earlier statements from the minister and state APC leadership have referenced mini-grids in multiple sites and attention to long-standing problems in Oke-Ogun and Ibarapa, areas that have endured multi-year blackouts in some communities. Federal approvals for related infrastructure, including the revival of the Ikere Gorge hydropower plant (to be expanded under a public-private partnership) and new substations in the Ibadan area under the Siemens-backed Presidential Power Initiative, further signal targeted investment.
Oyo’s own electricity market is also evolving under the Electricity Act 2023, which decentralises generation, transmission, and distribution to states.
The state has pursued independent power projects and regulatory frameworks aiming to raise available capacity significantly in the coming years. The interplay between federal reforms and state-level initiatives will be crucial: mini-grids and off-grid solar can rapidly serve underserved rural and peri-urban areas that the national grid has historically neglected, while grid upgrades address denser urban demand.
Politically, the meetings carried clear 2027 implications. Oyo APC’s governorship candidate, Senator Sharafadeen Alli (who received his INEC nomination form in recent weeks and has been working to reconcile with primary rivals), attended and publicly endorsed Tegbe’s capacity. Party leaders present expressed confidence in the minister’s ability to deliver on both his national mandate and the party’s electoral ambitions.
Tegbe’s dual role—as a high-profile Oyo indigene in the federal cabinet and a visible mobiliser—positions him as a bridge between Abuja’s policy machinery and the state’s grassroots structures.
Previous engagements with the APC Reconciliation Committee and support groups underscore an ongoing effort to heal primary-season divisions and present a united front.
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The deeper context is Nigeria’s long struggle with electricity. Decades of underinvestment, policy inconsistency, gas-to-power bottlenecks, and weak commercial frameworks have left many communities in intermittent or total darkness, constraining businesses, education, healthcare, and quality of life. The Tinubu administration’s approach—combining debt resolution, metering acceleration, transmission upgrades, decentralised renewables, and the enabling framework of the Electricity Act—represents an attempt at systemic rather than purely incremental change. Early indicators of higher generation peaks and expanded metering are encouraging, but the ultimate test remains reliability at the household and small-business level.
For Oyo residents in Ogbomoso, Oke-Ogun, and Ibarapa, the near-term question is whether the promised projects will indeed translate into fewer outages and tangible economic relief. For the APC, the strategic calculation is that visible improvements in power—however unevenly distributed so far—can be woven into a broader narrative of continuity and delivery ahead of 2027.
Tegbe’s campaign launch makes that linkage explicit: policy progress is being presented not only as governance achievement but as political capital.
Whether the modest gains of the first 100 days compound into transformative reliability will depend on sustained execution across gas supply, transmission, distribution discipline, security of infrastructure, and private investment. In the meantime, the minister from Ibadan has placed both the power sector’s challenges and the party’s organisational discipline squarely on the campaign table in his home state. The lights, both literal and political, are now a central part of the conversation.
Samuel O. Sulaimon is the founder and Editor-in-Chief of Naijapiz. He covers News, Sports, Finance, Faiths, Education, Technology.
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