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Onyebuchi Ezigbo in Abuja

Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) condemned as outrageous the statement credited to Minister of Power, Adebayo Adelabu, claiming that 150 million Nigerians now enjoyed adequate electricity with 5,500MW.

NLC said it was an insult and a joke taken too far for a government to make such a wild claim in a country that still struggled to generate a meagre and inconsistent 5,000 megawatts—far below the global benchmark of 1,000MW per one million people

In a statement signed by NLC President Joe Ajaero, the labour movement urged the minister to stop making such unsubstantiated claims, adding that Nigerians are “tired of propaganda and sophisticated gymnastics”.

It said it was disheartening that in the last 12 years of privatisation of the power sector, no significant capacity had been added to the existing facilities.

Ajaero said, “This wild assertion is not only pretentious, it is 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.

“Perhaps, the minister wants to perform Jesus’ miracle of feeding 5,000 persons with five loaves of bread and two fishes.

“For the minister 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.”

NLC said Nigeria should be generating no less than 150,000 MW to justify such a claim by the the minister.

NLC stated, “Yet, even on its best day, the country’s electricity generation has never exceeded 5,500MW—and that figure remains unstable and unreliable.

“We want to ask; Is Nigeria’s standard different from 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?

This is not how performance is measured but could be likened to a joke carried too far.

“The truth is that millions of Nigerians, from urban slums to rural communities, continue to live without access to electricity. 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.”

NLC said the recent electricity tariff hike, masked under the so-called “Band A, B, and C” classification, is nothing but a sophisticated scheme to legalise exploitation.”

According to NLC, 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. It is apparent that those who preside over the helms of affairs have either lost their sense of humanity or do not entirely care about the consequences of their actions on the masses who are undergoing the most severe hardship in our history as a nation.”