Politically speaking, the performance of the honorable Minister of power since he was appointed has left much to be desired and point to misplacement of priorities for a sector that over the years has failed to deliver the desired quantity of power supply to Nigerians. Even though he is an Accountant by qualification and not too knowledgeable about the power sector, one expects that he would have assembled a team of those who know about the sector to guide and assist him to set his priorities right.

The Minister has been faltering in his policy outlooks and pronouncements, which is evident in the ongoing abysmal rating of his performance by the public. If he is not blaming Nigerians for wasting energy by not putting off their refrigerators as if he is not aware that electricity is not stable in our country, he will pronounce discriminatory tariff for Nigerians by compartmentalizing them into different tariff bands based on the number of hours they enjoy electricity daily. Recently, he reacted to the complaints against the tariff band policy by saying that it is those who do not pay electricity bills that are complaining. This is very insensitive and capable of heating the polity.

The next policy that is urgent to the Minister is the unbundling of Transmission Company of Nigeria (TCN) by creating the Nigeria Independent System Operator (NISO) from it. Another negative policy is the directive issued to the Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission (NERC) to be deducting some huge amounts from TCN account monthly, which is capable of negatively affecting the operations of the company.

It is necessary to remind ourselves of the promise of the honorable Minister that power generation will be increased to 6,000MW in six months, which could end up being a mirage because the honorable Minister is not focusing on the right priorities to actualize this promise. The daily performance of the sector in recent times does not point to an upward movement. It is true that the grid generated above 5,000MW in the month of May but there have been two dips when generation dropped below 3,000MW and these are pointers that necessary shock absorbers are absent, which ought to be of priority to anybody who is interested in stabilizing the national grid.

Having settled some debts owed generators and gas companies, the Minister ought to be more interested at collaborating with his counterpart in the oil and gas Ministry to ensure adequate gas supply to thermal stations.

Additionally, the issue of meters to customers ought to be in the front-burner as well as the provision of adequate reserves on the grid.

Similarly, network fortification by distribution companies should be of urgent interest to the Minister if his band A policy is to be meaningful. It is common knowledge that most 11kV feeders are very weak and fragile, forcing most customers to migrate to 33kV networks.

If he is retained to continue in the power sector, the Minister should resist the pressure by those who are after milking Nigerians without investing sufficiently to improve power supply in the country and focus on policies that will move the power sector forward. He should pay more attention to technical issues just as he has recently done with the Presidential Power Initiative (PPI) ongoing projects in collaboration with Siemens of Germany.