Public Affairs Analyst

  It is very disheartening that in 2024, the provision of a stable electricity supply remains a political campaign rhetoric. Nigeria is a laughing stock of the global community as a country whose citizens rely on different sizes and shapes of private electricity generators to power their homes and businesses. Billions of dollars of investments in the power sector have only yielded a mere 4,500 megawatts of public electricity supply. All the various reforms including privatisation of electricity generation and distribution haven’t impacted positively on the electricity supply chain. Even the payment of subsidies to power distribution companies has not made electricity readily available to consumers. Nigeria at present has 27 electricity generating companies popularly called GenCos and 11 power distribution companies better known as DisCos and they include Abuja, Benin, Eko, Enugu, Ibadan, Ikeja, Jos, Kaduna, Kano, Port Harcourt and Yola DisCos. The Minister of Power, Chief Adebayo Ade

  One cannot think well, love well, sleep well, if one has not dined well. — Virginia Woolf Nigerians are angry with their government at all levels. According to the ace Nigerian novelist, Buchi Emecheta, “A hungry man is an angry one.” The Yoruba people will say hunger does not cohabit with any other thing (ebi kii wo’nu ki oro mi wo). In case you don’t know, the French Revolution, 1789 – 1790s, was precipitated by bread shortages. According to History.com, “The storming of the medieval fortress of Bastille on July 14, 1789, began as a hunt for arms—and grains to make bread.   The French Revolution was obviously caused by a multitude of grievances more complicated than the price of bread, but bread shortages played a role in stoking anger towards the monarchy.” In the Holy Bible, Matthew 12 verses 1 – 4, “One Sabbath, Jesus was strolling with his disciples through a field of ripe grain. Hungry, the disciples were pulling off the heads of grain and munching on them. Some Pharisees

  Since Senator Abdul Ningi, (PDP, Bauchi Central) blew the whistle on budget padding by the National Assembly through his BBC interview on Saturday, March 9, 2024, many Nigerians have been gaslighting and scapegoating the federal lawmakers. Yes, they have their hands in Nigeria’s cookie jar but is the executive on any moral high ground on this matter? I don’t think so. Not even the whistleblower, Abdul Ningi, can be exonerated over this matter. According to Premium Times newspaper of Sunday, March 17, 2024, “The emergence of the phrase “budget padding” into Nigeria’s political lexicon could be traced to 2016, when Abdulmummin Jibrin, the then chairperson of the House of Representatives Committee on Appropriations, accused the then Speaker, Yakubu Dogara, and some principal officers of the House of padding the budget of the House with projects….. However, controversies over the insertion of projects into the budget could be traced to the beginning of this Fourth Republic.” Premium