Electricity Blackout: It’s Not Adelabu’s Fault

Barey 24 hours after the Minister of Power, Adebayo Adelabu apolosgised to Nigerians over persistent power outage in the country, his aide, Adebayo Olowoniyi has claimed that the minister cannot be blamed for the problem, saying the electricity blackout in the country is more of a systemic rather than a personal failure of the minister.

Adelabu had apologised to Nigerians earlier in the week, saying the government is trying to resolve the epileptic power supply which has crippled businesses and living conditions of not a few Nigerians. The minister later said the problem will be tackled within two weeks, pleading to Nigerians to bear with the administration.

Speaking on Arise TV on Thursday, the Olowoniyi who’s the Chief Technical Adviser to the minister defended him saying his principal cannot be totally blamed for the problem, adding that Adelabu only took responsibility because he’s the minister.

“Not necessarily directly his fault for the challenges that we have, but as the Minister of Power, he just took it was the right leadership step to say, okay, I take ownership of this issue, and I’m going to proffer a solution that would ensure power supply comes back in the shortest available time,” the minister’s aide said.

According to him, the epileptic power supply in the country was largely because of ongoing maintenance work of power and gas infrastructure across the country, which has led to shortage of gas supply to power plants. Once the repair works are concluded, he said, the situation will return to normal.

Olowoniyi: “We’re sure that within the next two weeks, full gas pressure will be back on the gas pipelines, and the power plants will be able to get enough gas at least to go back to their level of generation that they had in the last two to three months.

“I would already say that from yesterday, we would have gradually started to see some improvement as the pressure on the pipeline gradually starts to build up, and we will see continuous improvement over the next couple of weeks.”

Adelabu, the magazine recalls, recently drew the anger of not a few Nigerians after he said electricity consumers in the country leave their air conditions on  when they are not at home, saying electricity supply has been largely misused.