The Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) has descended on the Minister of Power, Adebayo Adelabu, over his recent claim that 150 million Nigerians now enjoy “adequate electricity” with a power generation capacity of 5,500 megawatts.
In a statement signed by its President, Comrade Joe Ajaero, the NLC described the Minister’s remarks as “outrageous,” “pretentious,” and “a bad joke” on millions of Nigerians grappling daily with darkness, exorbitant tariffs, and a broken power sector.
Reacting to what it termed “statistical gymnastics,” the NLC dismissed the Minister’s assertion as both misleading and insulting to the lived experiences of ordinary Nigerians. The Congress pointed out that Nigeria’s power generation capacity has consistently hovered below 5,500MW; an amount grossly inadequate to serve a population of over 200 million. According to global benchmarks, a country should generate at least 1,000MW per one million people, suggesting that Nigeria ought to be producing no less than 150,000MW to meet the basic power needs of 150 million citizens.
“Perhaps, the Minister wants to perform Jesus’ miracle of feeding 5,000 persons with 5 loaves of bread and 2 fishes,” Ajaero mocked. “This is not how performance is measured but could be likened to a joke carried too far.”
The NLC statement laid bare the dire reality across Nigeria—millions of citizens in rural communities and urban slums still live without electricity, while those with access endure frequent blackouts, arbitrary disconnections, and what the union described as “financial exploitation through a complex pyramid of inflated tariffs.”
The Congress further berated the 2013 privatization of the power sector, which it said had only succeeded in transferring critical national infrastructure into the hands of cronies with little to no improvement in service delivery. “Over a decade later, there has been no significant infrastructure upgrade or capacity expansion. Yet, these same GenCos and DISCOs, who have failed woefully, are now set to receive over N4 trillion in public subsidies—with zero accountability,” Ajaero lamented.
Also, the NLC criticized the government’s reported plan to privatize the Transmission Company of Nigeria (TCN) the last publicly owned component in the power value chain. Describing the move as “an economic ruse dressed in bureaucratic doublespeak,” the union warned that handing over TCN to private hands would further deepen the existing crisis in the sector.
The Congress also slammed the recent hike in electricity tariffs, introduced under the controversial “Band A, B, and C” classification. It called the new structure a “sophisticated scheme to legalize exploitation,” noting that despite DISCOs collecting over N700 billion from consumers, power supply remains “epileptic, erratic, and inaccessible.”
“Millions of Nigerians are now forced to choose between food and electricity bills,” the statement read. “It is apparent that those in charge have either lost their sense of humanity or simply do not care about the severe hardship their policies inflict on the masses.”
The NLC decried what it described as “regulatory impunity” and a system that enriches private profiteers and top officials of the Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission (NERC), while workers in the power sector remain poorly paid and overburdened.
Comrade Ajaero expressed a stern warning to the Minister and other key players in the sector: “Nigerians are tired of propaganda and false hope. Cease from insulting the intelligence of the people. If you generate, transmit, and distribute more power, we will see it in our homes and factories—not on the pages of newspapers.”
The Labour movement vowed to mobilize and use all lawful means to resist what it called “grand deception” and “organized profiteering” in the name of reform. “Let there be light not lies,” the NLC thundered.
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