Minister of Power, Joseph Tegbe, says the recent improvement in electricity supply across parts of the country has left some Nigerians jokingly pleading with him to “slow down” — because their freezers, long accustomed to erratic power, are now running non-stop and doing exactly what freezers are supposed to do.
Tegbe made the remarks on Wednesday, September 16, while commissioning a 3-megawatt solar hybrid power project at Yakubu Gowon University, formerly the University of Abuja. He recounted that communities which had gone as long as three months without electricity are now enjoying up to 18 hours of power a day, a shift dramatic enough that some residents called to complain, half in jest, that their appliances were finally working the way they should.
The minister tied the progress back to a commitment he made during his Senate confirmation screening, where he had promised Nigerians would begin to feel a real difference in power supply within three to six months.
Even so, Tegbe was candid about the scale of the challenge still ahead, pointing out that much of the country’s power infrastructure is over four decades old. He said the ministry is working through a systematic process of replacing and phasing out these aging assets with newer ones, rather than attempting an overnight fix.
