Atiku Abubakar, the 2023 presidential candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party, has expressed deep concern over Nigeria’s persistent power crisis and frequent national grid collapses.
The former Vice President condemned the prolonged blackout in the Southeast, Northwest, and Northeast regions, which has lasted for three weeks.
“In particular reference to the situations in both the Southeast and the entire states of the Northwest and Northeast, which have experienced complete blackouts in the past three weeks, every government department responsible for addressing the problem must act swiftly to restore electricity to these distressed geopolitical zones,” Atiku stated on his official X handle.
Atiku emphasized that his policy document, “My Covenant with Nigerians,” outlines the most proactive plan to resolve Nigeria’s perennial power outages.
He advocates for decentralizing electricity generation, transmission, and distribution to the states, allowing them to manage their energy needs independently.
“There is an urgent need to remove the entire electricity value chain from the exclusive list and grant states the power to generate, transmit, and distribute electricity for themselves,” Atiku stressed.
He also discussed the importance of complementary transmission and distribution infrastructure to support supplementary energy production.
Atiku believes Nigeria’s energy strategy should combine renewable and non-renewable sources, including hydro, solar, wind, biofuels, coal, and gas. He encouraged private investors to develop mini-grid transmission systems linked to the super-grid in the medium to long term.
